Michal Čihař - Why do people buy non documented phones?

Why do people buy non documented phones?

While working on Gammu, I still wonder why people who want to connect their phone to computer buy phones from vendors who use own proprietary protocol or do not share any documentation. Then they come to Gammu mailing list and/or bug tracker and want Gammu to support their phone. Sometimes the fix is easy, but usually it is quite lot of work to debug unknown protocol.

I know this situation quite good from past. I had Alcatel phone, which was using proprietary protocol for access to in phone contacts and events. Fortunately Alcatel released synchronisation software for these phones (it of course runs only on Windows) which had enabled debugging and it was quite easy to understand protocol thanks to logs it could produce. But as newer phones with some extensions appeared, maintaining this became harder and harder.

When I looked for new phone, I decided to buy Sony-Ericcsson K750i phone. Writing support for most of functionality (well in fact all I need) was just matter of few days. The reason why it was so fast was that this phones is using open standards (e.g. OBEX, IrMC) and vendor specific AT commands are documented in freely available documents.

It's your choice how good will your phone interoperate with computer. If you buy well documented piece of hardware, chance to have it fully supported is much higher.