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Location Based Services using QJAE

I'd like to test the GPS program written by Yakov Shafranovich, but I need some volunteers. If you have an A700 or a MM7400 and would like to help, please run this short test program for me and let me know if it works.

For a couple years now, people have been complaining about the complete lack of Location Based Service APIs for Sprint handsets. In fact, almost no carrier offered LBS save Nextel's i730 for a long time. Now Sprint's MIDP 2.0 devices have incorporated Qualcomm's Java Application Extensions (QJAE) for determining the GPS location of a handset and Yakov has written a program to test it out. I'd like to know if it actually works, but I don't have an Samsung A700 or Sanyo MM7400. You will need a MIDP 2.0 phone (with QJAE) to run this program.

You can download the program from http://apgap.com/pub/GpsTester.jad. When you launch the application, it should appear similar to this figure.

Choose the Start LBS option shown here as number 2. Next choose the Show Location option shown here as number 4.

If everything works successfully, you should see your lattitude and longitude displayed similar to what you see here.

If you encounter problems, please let me know. If your phone displays security warnings about an application attempting to access location information, please report that as well. Most importantly, if you can successfully read your position, I'd like to hear about it.

I've received one reply so far that doesn't look good for the MM7400.

Hi, I'm an MM-7400 user and have tested your program, with both my "Location" option activated and deactivated. Unfortunately, choosing the menu options "Start LBS" and "Get Location" gave me "Game/Application Terminated" errors. Please contact me again if you need any more MM-7400 testing.

  • By wfrantz at 24 Jan 2005 - 17:44

Re: Location Based Services using QJAE

Here's an exchange from Sprint's official developer forum.

Author: TonyL
Date: 2005-06-28 at 02:14 PM CDT
Subject: Who pays this bill?

1 sanyo mm7400 phone: $300
1 hour writing midlet: $50
1 Verisign Certificate: $400
20 hours figuring out that someone thought that the HEX ESN should be case sensitive: $1000

Finally getting your device activated properly, and the midlet running, and finding out that the GPS class doesn`t actually do anything... priceless.

If the com.qualcomm.qjae.gps package doen't actually work, then why wasn't that stated anywhere? Even better, why was everyone still told that then need to purchase a verisign certificate, and enable Developer Root on their phone if the applicatoin that they were trying to build was never going to work!?

I suppose it is possible that the application might work, and I'm jumping the gun, but I haven't seen a single post here from a developer who successfully got a location fix. If anyone out there has actually got this working, I would really appreciate any pointers. Even just a "I got this working" would help me, since I currently feel like I just threw away a whole bunch of money, on a project that was destined for failure.

Author: Paul Klemstine
Date: 2005-06-29 at 04:46 PM CDT

I feel the same way. I bought the expensive phone, two year contract, verisign cert, $15,000 for satellite imagery, and wasted my personal time working with Sprint engineers working out bugs on the MM7400 phone. My app looks great, but is it functional yet? no...

I speculate that we will never be allowed to access the GPS location directly from the phone, and that we'll be forced to use the Sprint Mobility Framework, which according to the last E-week article about Sprints location based services, will cost about $0.25 per location fix.

  • By wfrantz at 11 Nov 2005 - 16:22

Re: Location Based Services using QJAE

I tried it out on an IP-A790 by Samsung. It loaded OK, but is displaying "No Error" in response to any of the menu options, including Get Location.

Any idea if the read from the GPS is dependent on the network support, which might be lacking in the area where I was testing it?

  • By Anonymous at 5 Apr 2005 - 08:13

Re: Location Based Services using QJAE

This program is strikingly similar in both design and execution to Qualcomm's own GPSTest apps... I don't know if it was a reverse engineering or not, but I'd say the same people wrote both apps if I didn't know better.

Regardless, Sprint can't get their own LBS servers working yet (all the way at least). I know, because I've used them...

GPS is close, but the phone software is already done, it's the servers that are the problem right now...

  • By Anonymous at 8 Mar 2005 - 01:03

Re: Location Based Services using QJAE

I am the author of the program above. According to Sprint's documentation, you must enabled the Developer access on the phone by going to the developer site, choosing "Go To Market", "Device Activation". You have put in the ESN and this will send a text message to your phone enabling access to the API. Otherwise, you will get a security warning.

Also, on developer forums at Sprint there has been talk about some kind of a change in the API. No final answer on that.

I would also appreciate if you let me know next time before you reference my site so I can help you with additional information.

http://www.shaftek.org/blog/

  • By Anonymous at 3 Feb 2005 - 01:56