Where’s the MAC Modem Driver For S60 Phones?

Tommi over at his S60 blog brings us the good news that Nokia has stepped up its activities to bring better support of N-Seires phones for Mac users. What I am still missing and constantly keep looking for is USB modem support for S60 phones. I am close to consider buying a Mac notebook when my current computing equipment needs replacement but this is one of the few things that still keep me from really doing it.

Some will say, pah, not needed, just use Bluetooth to connect to the phone. Good idea, but not fast enough anymore for HSDPA phones such as the N95. Anyone aware that USB modem drivers for the MAC exist for N-Series phones and I just did not find them so far?

Another theoretical approach might be to have a virtual machine running with Windows XP inside and install the drivers there!? Anyone tried this before? I haven’t the slightest clue if it’s possible. Even if it is would it be possible for Mac applications to use a dial up connection running in the virtual Windows XP? Any news and hints welcome!

8 thoughts on “Where’s the MAC Modem Driver For S60 Phones?”

  1. Martin,

    There is a German-made Macintosh solution to using most Nokia phones incl. E and N Series. Nova Media have been in this area for a long time and are very responsive. I believe their drivers are white-labeled by Vodafone and others.

    i use their scripts with an E61 and it works well.
    Hope this solves a problem.

    http://www.novamedia.de/devices/device.php

  2. Hi Paul,

    Interesting news!!!

    According to the list, the Motorola V3xx is the only HSDPA capable phone currently supported via USB. The list also contains the Nokia N95 but it looks like only Bluetooth is supported for the moment. I hope that changes soon. I’ll keep watching 🙂

    Thanks for the Link!

    Martin

  3. Martin — Not an OS X user myself (yet, though my next purchase is looking like a MacBook). However, I AM a Linux user — have you looked into whether there is a port of wvdial to OS X? wvdial is a terminal ppp dialer that works flawlessly under Linux for USB dial-up access… Seing as OSX is, at it’s underpinnings, UNIX, no reason why this shouldn’t work.

    Just a thought, but wvdial is dead-easy to setup on Linux with an N-series or E-series phone over USB… if wvdial has been ported to OS X, the setup should be just as easy.

    -olly

  4. Here’s another interesting pice of information I received via eMail:

    “It turns out that all I had to do was to
    connect the V3xx to my Mac PowerBook with a USB cable and configure it to
    “dial” WAP.CINGULAR. The Mac then recognized the V3xx as a USB modem, and I
    am now achieving 1 Megabit/second download speeds via the AT&T/Cingular
    UMTS/HSPDA network here in Boston. The driver was already in the system!
    Wouldn’t you know it, Steve Jobs leaves no stones unturned!!”

  5. Hi Martin,

    Have tested this with Nokia N95. Works OK using the Ross Barker Nokia 3G CID1 modem script and the APN name in my case
    internet.proximus.be

  7. Wim

    Do you mean you used your N95 as a USB modem with a Mac? What were the settings? I can only get it to work with Bluetooth.

    Thanks
    Michael

  8. I just connected my E61 to my MacBook Pro, chose PC Suite mode and in the /dev directory, there appears new entries like cu.usbmodem0000103DB and tty.usbmodem0000103DB. And when System Preferences is opened, a message saying that a new device was found appears too. I can also see “Nokia E61” in the list of interfaces, apparently recognized as a modem.

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