European Wafaa

I recently received my sexy svelte fully loaded new phone - a Nokia E71, and boy is it good. It's actually that good that I will no longer be using my Nokia N800 anywhere near as much. There is one major problem that I have, but it isnt just with this phone model as the problem appears to be much deeper. From my relatively simple tests all Symbian OS9.1 powered devices are unable to function as modems under Linux

I have run tests on 3 different Symbian powered phones - S60 3rd Edition FP1 powered Nokia E71, Nokia N95 and also a UIQ3 powered SonyEricsson M600i. The issue I get is the following:

Sep 17 12:04:53 fveult01 kernel: hub 1-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1
Sep 17 12:04:53 fveult01 kernel: usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
Sep 17 12:04:54 fveult01 kernel: usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Sep 17 12:04:54 fveult01 kernel: usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0421, idProduct=00ab
Sep 17 12:04:54 fveult01 kernel: usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Sep 17 12:04:54 fveult01 kernel: usb 2-1: Product: Nokia E71
Sep 17 12:04:54 fveult01 kernel: usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Nokia
Sep 17 12:04:55 fveult01 kernel: cdc_acm 2-1:1.10: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
Sep 17 12:04:55 fveult01 kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
Sep 17 12:04:55 fveult01 kernel: drivers/usb/class/cdc-acm.c: v0.25:USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters
Sep 17 12:04:55 fveult01 kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether
Sep 17 12:04:55 fveult01 kernel: usb 2-1: bad CDC descriptors
Sep 17 12:04:55 fveult01 kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host
Sep 17 12:04:55 fveult01 kernel: usb 2-1: bad CDC descriptors
Sep 17 12:04:55 fveult01 kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_wlan

openSUSE is not alone in this issue, I have tried it on Foresight Linux too, and they have a slightly newer kernel than us. Basically what I'm looking for is some help from any kernel plumbers (yes there's the big plumbing convention on atm), to try and resolve this issue. Also if users of other Symbian powered devices could let me know what does/doesn't work with their Linux machines that would be really helpful - either leave a comment or mail me. If I use any of the phones as Mass Storage devices then it all works a charm and i can move files to and fro to my heart's content.

So what's the big deal if it doesn't work as a modem? Well apart from pissing me off, Symbian powers the bulk of the world's handsets. Most of Nokia's phones are Symbian powered, Samsung has a lot of devices powered by it, and to a lesser extent so does SonyEricsson. Certainly in Europe they are omnipresent, and being able to just plug it into any one of my laptops would be so much easier as I wouldn't need another device with a separate sim card to get onto the web. Yes Symbian is on its way to being Open Source but it isn't there quite yet.