zikarus | # 1 | 2009-11-05, 23:02 | Report

Hello,

as most of us I am heavily looking forward to the N900

The one thing that was and still is making me a bit unsure whether to buy one is the lack of support for the above mentioned Bluetooth profile which is definitively a must have when owning a car with the appropiate equipment. The comfort of rSAP is simply unbeatable...

Does anybody have some more information whether rSAP will be supported by the N900 in the near future (as it already is in most other Nokia phones)?

Best wishes
zikarus

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Last edited by zikarus; 2009-11-05 at 23:12.

zaheerm | # 2 | 2009-11-05, 23:15 | Report

Yes this'd be useful on my car too.

Cherrypie | # 3 | 2009-11-06, 08:26 | Report

I think nokia is porting their existing bluetooth profiles to maemo 5, so it should be implemented. But you better ask some1 with a prototype copy.

matteone | # 4 | 2009-11-06, 09:15 | Report

Hi.

I'm a lucky man with a N900 prototipe and I can confirm that the N900 NOW works with my CAR with an integrated bluetooth stereo ( I have a ford focus with a standard bluetooth module ).

The sounds quality is perfect ( in the 2 ways )... bettere than the iPhone :-)
When anyone call me and the number is registred I can see the name on my car's display, but ... i can't yet browse my phonebook on the car's dislpay.
So ... If i can see the name of the person who is calling me I think that when it is released next software update will include the ability to browse the phonebook.

Withnail | # 5 | 2009-11-06, 11:56 | Report

Sounds like this could be a connection via 'headset' profile.

With rSAP, the car kit takes control of the GSM radio tasks.
When connected in rSAP mode, the only ongoing connectivity with the device is for SIM access, such as subscriber authentication (e.g call setup). The mobile can then 'sleep' - meaning it no longer has to control calls, measure/report the radio environment etc.

The main advantage with rSAP is the radio is routed via an external antenna rather than fighting its way through all the glass/metal of your car, which has the benefit of better call quality/fewer dropped calls.

Due to the low level access with the SIM and GSM security features, I'd be very surprised if the community could bring this profile to Fremantle - but as my car also has this feature, I'd love to be wrong about this!

aboaboit | # 6 | 2009-11-06, 18:35 | Report

In fact, I just discovered this bug comment which basically says not available.

Quindor | # 7 | 2009-11-06, 19:59 | Report

I too have been longing and lobying for rSAP on the N900, a bit of my progress in this was done in this topic.

Sadly enough, as stated in that topic I have had contact with nokia about this mather, also internally with the guys developing meamo and also with the developer working on the bluetooth stack.

As of right now, there are no official plans of supporting the N900 profile within nokia. This could come, but right now it is just not the case.

There was a bit of light on the horizon though. The N900 or rather Maemo uses the bluez bluetooth stack, also used in android or openmoko as example of mobile devices. Desktops also use this for instance in ubuntu to connect with bluetooth devices.

As you can see in my other topic, there was someone working on rSAP support under the google code of summer project. Sadly enough, it seems all his worked stopped at a pretty early stage. I read somewhere some testing had been done, but nowhere near production ready. I have tried to contact the person in question, but recieved no reply.

Basically, as I see it. A bunch of programmers (or maybe just one good one really) needs to pick up where the other guy left off, finish the implementation and make it available within bluez. We could then use that branch of bluez on our N900's to test with it and in time, if that becomes good/stable enough, hopefully it will be merged into the default branch, and as such also give Nokia the possebility to include the functionality on our N900's/Maemo.

So as of right now, bad news to be honnest. Not any time soon, officially, but with effort, within forseeable future using a community effort.

I tried to create a brainstorm about this, but somehow I didn't manage to get it up there. I would think that is the first step.

Glad to see other people lobying for it too! It used to be a reason to choose nokia, because they had the only working implementation in symbian and actually understood it! Thus I also think it would be a beneficial addition to the Maemo operating system in driving sales, as the symbian models did for nokia in the past. rSAP is present (and mandatory) using pretty much any VAG (VW, Audio, Seat, Skoda, etc.) carkit (which in turn is a Nokia OEM module)

Quindor | # 8 | 2009-11-06, 20:08 | Report

It seems some one named Claudio Takahasi has created a new branch of bluez-sap. Interesting times!

zikarus | # 9 | 2009-11-06, 22:37 | Report

Glad to see some interest and to hear that there might be at least a little chance to see rSAP implemented in the future.

But somehow I still do not understand why Nokia has not already done that :

1. Nokia (as one of the few big players in the market) has been supporting and pushing rSAP for years now. There already exists a stable code basis for the Symbian S60 platform which just needed to be compiled for Freemantle which should not be too big a deal from my end customer - non developer - point of view...

2. At least for me the missing rSAP functionality is a serious deal breaker which already kept me from buying some other tempting smartphones (including all the Android alternatives which seem to be the only true contenders software wise; the iPhone btw does not support rSAP either).

Still hope that Nokia will change its mind and make rSAP available for the N900 asap. I would love to have one and hope not to be forced to buy a HD2 instead just because of one missing key feature. Actually I would prefer the N900 over the HD2 anytime (never liked WinMO) - but not as long as rSAP does not work...

P.S @ Quindor
I have not been able to place the feature request at the right place either. Following the system took me to the bug reporting zone in the end where the entry obviously was not welcomed...
Maybe some smarter guys could help out to reassure that our interest/feature request reaches the inner Nokia/Maemo circle... This site is great with lots of enthusiastic people but I think there is some potential to make things a tad more userfriendly

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Last edited by zikarus; 2009-11-06 at 22:51.

Quindor | # 10 | 2009-11-07, 00:48 | Report

I do have to warn you with this. In the time that the sony xperia X1 came out, I bought one.

While this phone does not officially support rSAP, it's 'brother' the HTC Touch HD did. Hardware wise they where exactly the same and using xda-developers there was enough, well tuned, well optimized firmware to around.

Up until this date, I know of no-one whom has a HTC device with Windows mobile that can use their rSAP implementation successfully, all of the time. With some it works, with some it works half of the time and with some, it won't ever work.

With the X1 I had the experience that with 5 different sim cards, 2 would work, one would half of the time and 2 would never ever work..... way way to vague behavior to consider workable and off course, my own sim would not work. The only trend I could discover with this is that newer SIM cards (with more sim memory) had problems with the rSAP implementation of HTC.

Now it's been a few months that I tried it, but I would consider this VERY carefully before everything buying a HTC phone with the idea in mind that you can use rSAP.

Even the Samsung i8910 (which I bought after the X1) which runs Symbian s60v5, like the N97 for instance give me so much trouble with it (sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but worst of all, randomly the receiver would not come back on after leaving the car!).... unworkable. Samsung refused to fix it, while I had had similar problems in the past with nokia, which they always fixed after a few firmware releases.

So back to nokia for me, and to the N900. I'd rather have it not work AT ALL, the half or unreliably... So now I will use two phones for as long as it's needed.... the carkit wil not work with anything else then nokia's, since it was made by nokia. Had I known on forehand.... I would not have bought it... and would have sprung for the fiscon carkit unit, half the price....