Getting iSync to work with a new Sprint Motorla RAZR V3m November 8, 2006 at 1:31 pm
[ Listening: Finally Woken from the album “Finally Woken” by Jem ]
So I exchanged my new Samsung A900 in for a RAZR, in the hopes of using iSync to sync my calendar and address books over bluetooth. Wasn’t too happy to find that iSync gave the “Device is not supported by iSync” message when I tried to add the device. I however, am not quick to give up on tech things like this and figured I might be able to get it working myself. I saw hits on the net of people using V3m phone from other carriers, often requiring direct editing of files in the iSync.app tree itself.
Basing changes on this thread about the KRZR K1m I changed the MetaClasses.plist file on my MacBookPro… but still couldn’t get iSync to recognize the device.
I figured that the strings used to recognize the device were likely wrong, and needed to figure out my phone’s strings… to do this, I used the ktrace and kdump commands to trace the blued process on the mac when trying to add the phone again. Aha.. I found things that looked helpful:
manzana:~ mmarion$ egrep 'GMM:|GMI:' blued.txt | grep -i motorola | sort -u +GMI: Motorola CE, Copyright 2000\r +GMM: Motorola NC-V3m Phone\r
Now we’re getting somewhere… (don’t ask me what gmi and gmm are.. I don’t know, I just looked for things that were in the MetaClasses.plist file and might be related). Anyone else that has a newer phone/carrier’s model that isn’t being recognized yet.. this will probably work for you too (finding the strings your phone is using that is.. not the exact strings I found).
So I added a new <string> line like so:
<string>Motorola CE, Copyright 2000+Motorola NC-V3m Phone</string>
Killed and restarted iSync.. and voila, my phone was added.
Now I can sync iCal and my Address book.
Note.. it’s not perfect, after sleeping the MBP, the phone isn’t seen on bluetooth sometimes.. I just open the bluetooth “browse device” bit to kick in a connection between the MBP and phone, and then iSync works.
The sync also fails sometimes when deleting calendar events.. so I just blow the whole calendar away (which is pretty simple… there’s a quick “deleted all events” choice under options) and sync. That might not work for people that really want 2 way syncing to work, I just need my phone to have a copy of what my computer has (from exchange at work).
Some info:
The path to the MetaClasses.plist file in question is:
$ pwd
/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin
/Contents/Resources
Remember that one… 🙂
I’ve put a copy of the section I added to the MetaClasses.plist file here: MetaClasses.plist
Update: Oops.. I forgot to add, for some reason the calendar bits sync ok, except for the location of the meeting.. trying to figure that one out still.
Update (Nov 15, 12:45): People have asked for my full MetaClasses.plist file so here it is.
Miguelito,
For those of us who don’t use terminal, can you help? I have a v3m which I want to sync with iCal and Address Book so I don’t have to carry that ridiculous Treo anymore but I don’t really understand what you’ve written here. Please help. THANKS!
Miguelito – so I added your script. I’m able to connect to my phone now using the Bluetooth Utility but when I attempt to add a device via iSync it says the name of my phone – and The Device is not supported by iSync. Another little phone icon pops up also and it says iSunc can not connect to this device. Any ideas?
Since the MetaClasses.plist is small, would you be willing to send me yours? I could even post on my site if you want to link to it.
So this is driving me nuts….I got it to sync, but it only syncs the calendar. It doesn’t give any errors, but does not add the contacts. Please help.
I’m Running a Macbook Pro 10.4.8. I Edited the >plist in Text Edit–I even Used Your Complete .plist that you Offered. Is it Because Its Product Red?
Kevin, possibly, it might have a different string.
Did you try my getbtstring.sh script linked off my site to see what value your phone sends the computer? It’s in a newer post then this one, just reload my main page.
Thank you so much. My Razr now syncs with my iCal. This is very exciting. I will now have to Play with my settings….but, it works.
Help! I have a brand new Sprint RAZR V3m and I cannot get it to sync! I can pair it with blue tooth and I can browse it but I cannot get iSync to recognize it! I ran the getbtstring.sh script, the string was already in your complete MetaClasses.plist. I tried using that one. I tried restarting and nothing. I still get the same error. “iSync can not connect to this device.” Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Disregard my last post (if it showed up at all). After much frustration I finally got my new V3m working with your modified .plist. After deleting and re-pairing the bluetooth connection a dozen times, I finally deleted on both the mac and the phone and rebooted both, then re-paired and iSync finally works!
A couple of things I have noticed, if the phone number is listed as “other” in AddressBook, iSync will not sync it (or possibly the V3m rejects it), So I had to manually change all my vcards in AddressBook. No biggie, I didn’t have that many. The other thing I noticed is that iSync will not sync all day events from iCal. Again this could be that the V3m’s calendar is rejecting it. In anycase I will have to change them but that will be another day. I am just glad that I have my phone numbers! Thank you for all the great info on this page!