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1    Introducing Palm OS Virtual Phone

Palm OS® Virtual Phone Guide

Palm OS® Developer Suite

Palm OS® Virtual Phone is a tool which simulates the AT interpreter of a mobile telephone, and provides a user interface to change phone settings.

Virtual Phone can help you develop and test applications which use the Telephony Manager API. Virtual Phone recognizes Telephony Manager AT commands and responds exactly the same as a mobile phone. Virtual Phone is also capable of simulating events like incoming voice calls and SMS messages.

What Virtual Phone Can Do for You ^TOP^

  • Virtual Phone provides developers with a fast and simple tool for implementing, debugging, and testing a telephony application during the initial development stages.
  • Virtual Phone reduces debugging and testing time for telephony applications which can be a lengthy process when using a real cellular phone.
  • Virtual Phone eliminates delays due to slow phone device answer time and delays in wireless connections.
  • Virtual Phone eliminates costs associated with establishing a real connection in order to test an outgoing or incoming SMS message. These costs are prohibitive.
  • Virtual Phone provides an intermediate solution before final testing with a real phone.

About Virtual Phone ^TOP^

Virtual Phone is not intended to test the different phone drivers that can be used to communicate with telephones. It is designed to test applications which communicate with a mobile telephone.

Virtual Phone is based on a plug-in architecture that supports standard phone driver functions. For example, the Standard GSM phone driver plug-in supports all the functions of a standard GSM phone.

What Virtual Phone Does ^TOP^

Virtual Phone supports all the services offered by the Telephony Manager.

Virtual Phone considers the state of the telephone when performing some operations. For example, a reduced set of operations can be performed on Virtual Phone if the Security State is not set to Ready.

Virtual Phone provides all of the following functions:

  • Simulates network events (signal strength, signal lost)
  • Simulates incomings calls and supports conference calls
  • Simulates incoming SMS
  • Makes an outgoing call and send SMS with suitable AT commands
  • Supports multipart SMS
  • Simulates the registration to an operator
  • Manages SMS PDU with advanced configuration
  • Initiates data connection
  • Supports the SIM toolkit and provides SIM applications

What Virtual Phone Does Not Do ^TOP^

Virtual Phone does not simulate automatic changes in the state of the telephone such as fluctuations in the network level or progressive drain of the battery. These state parameters can be manually changed in the configuration panel.

Virtual Phone Background Information ^TOP^

Virtual Phone simulates a standard mobile telephone working under a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Network.

When working with Virtual Phone, you should understand the following background information:

  • Telecommunication standards

    The European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) has established the European Telecommunication Standards (ETS) which contains a series of attention (AT) commands recognized by a mobile phone. It is assumed that you are aware of these standards.

    For information on these standards, see GSM Technical Specification 07.07 Reference TS/SMG-040707Q and GSM Technical Specification 07.05: SMS AT Commands. See also GSM 11.11 Specification of the Subscriber Identity Module for SIM access +CRSM command and GSM 11.14 Specification of the SIM Application Toolkit for the Subscriber Identity Module for STK related informations.

  • Telephony Manager

    The Palm OS® provides the Telephony Manager, which programmers can use to write applications that interact with telephony services. For information about the Telephony Manager, see the Telephony Manager chapter in Exploring Palm OS: Telephony and SMS.

  • Palm OS Simulator

    You can use Palm OS Simulator to test your applications. For information on Palm OS Simulator, see Palm OS Simulator Guide.

Virtual Phone communicates with Palm OS Simulator and processes AT commands issued by applications running under the Palm OS. Processing includes analyzing AT commands sent from the Palm OS Simulator to the Virtual Phone, forwarding commands to the appropriate Service (Network, Security, etc.) and generating both AT command replies and unsolicited events (for example, RING...).

Virtual Phone logs exchanged AT commands, and you can save this log into a text file.

Virtual Phone Overview ^TOP^

Virtual Phone requires several ASCII format text files, which use the standard INI file format. Virtual Phone will create these files if they do not already exist.

Profile File ^TOP^

When you run Virtual Phone the first time, Virtual Phone starts by opening the New Profile wizard as described in "Creating a Virtual Phone Profile." When you close Virtual Phone, Virtual Phone creates a file called DefaultConfigFile.vpc in the data directory. (You can assign a different name to the profile file using File > Save Phone Config As.)

The profile file stores the following information:

Virtual Phone is automatically associated with the VPC extension, so you can launch Virtual Phone by double-clicking on a VPC file's icon.

SMS Message Files ^TOP^

Two SMS files, SmsStore.db and SmsSentStore.db, store SMS messages. SmsStore contains SMS messages that Virtual Phone has received or sent; SmsSentStore contains messages that Virtual Phone has sent to the network.

Phone Book Files ^TOP^

Virtual Phone supports the ETSI standard phone book files.


NOTE: Virtual Phone uses the PhbLD.db, PhbMC.db, and PhbRC.db files, but does not update them using call features. You can modify the content of these files using any text editor.
  • PhbDC.db - Mobile Equipment (ME) dialed calls list
  • PhbEN.db - SIM or ME emergency number
  • PhbFD.db - Fixed phone book
  • PhbLD.db - Last dialed list
  • PhbMC.db - ME missed calls list (received calls that were unanswered)
  • PhbME.db - Phone phone book
  • PhbMT.db - Combined ME and SIM phone book
  • PhbON.db - SIM or ME own numbers (MSISDNs) list
  • PhbRC.db - ME received calls list
  • PhbSM.db - SIM phone book
  • PhbTA.db - Terminal Adapter (TA) phone book

The phone book files all have the same format, which consists of an index number, name, and phone number.

Configuration Files Summary ^TOP^

All configuration files, phone book files, and log files are created in the directory where Virtual Phone is executed. In general, you do not need to edit these files directly because Virtual Phone provides dialog boxes to set the values that are stored in the files.

We strongly recommend that you keep a back-up copy of these files for security and recovery reasons.