Originally Posted by paulkoan

I have been playing with having a small script that connects to my imap server in imap-idle mode, then alerts me if there are new emails in various folders.

My email setup has new emails coming into folders other than INBOX, so this solves two problems: getting alerts for emails I am interested in, and removing the need to poll. And perhaps in PR1.2 the dbus call to send/recieve email will be fixed, which means the script could trigger the download too - and it would be great if this was a per folder call, but I doubt that it will be.

But it occurs to me that this is a less than optimal approach to push, as it requires a permanent data connection established. This is how iphone does it (albeit to Apple servers that act as a proxy to your email server) . S60 has an option for push via an SMS notification. This is "real push" in my mind, the notification comes out of band rather than across a data connection.

However, SMS isn't a cheap way to get a notification. It occurs to me that you could do something similar with a phone call. If the call isn't answered, it is a free signal.

I happen to have a spare voip number on my server, so I could have something checking the various folders on my email for new mails, when seen, tell my voip server to call my n900. The n900 would then detect the incoming call from a specific number, and issue an alert instead of answering the call - and issuing the dbus call to send-recieve email.

This whole setup wouldn't be useful to many people, but these are the fun things we can do with this phone, so they have to be tried.

So my question is - how can I detect an incoming call and trigger some action and prevent the phone app responding? CallBlocker does this somehow, so any ideas?

I was thinking it might be possible to monkey with the callerid of the incoming call too, to convey some information about what event is being signalled...

Paul

Originally Posted by paulkoan

But it occurs to me that this is a less than optimal approach to push, as it requires a permanent data connection established.

Originally Posted by juise-

Do you actually know that having an open data connection consumes any more power than just being on the cell network, listening for incoming calls/SMS/push notifications? I don't know much about how the 3G link layer stuff works, but I haven't been able to measure a difference in battery life (which is the only thing I can see being subject to optimization here).

At least a TCP connection, once opened, doesn't transmit anything unless there's some real data to be put through the connection.

Originally Posted by juise-

Do you actually know that having an open data connection consumes any more power than just being on the cell network, listening for incoming calls/SMS/push notifications? I don't know much about how the 3G link layer stuff works, but I haven't been able to measure a difference in battery life (which is the only thing I can see being subject to optimization here).

At least a TCP connection, once opened, doesn't transmit anything unless there's some real data to be put through the connection.

Originally Posted by paulkoan

Do they still double-dip and charge for incoming calls as well?

receive voicemails

So... you are saying that dbus is the thing that routes the incoming SMS to Conversations? Do you have any more info?