iSync and Motorola (verizon) L7c - won't sync - help!
 

Just purchased this phone and really like it. Unfortunately, when I pair through bluetooth or try USB connectivity, iSync says the phone is not compatible.

The L7 is on the approved list but not the L7c. Can't be that much different, can they? Here is what system profiler shows for bluetooth
Devices (Paired, Favorites, etc):
SteveL:
Name: SteveL
Address: xx.xxx.xxx
Type: Cellular Phone
Services: OBEX File Transfer, OBEX Push Transfer, Headset Voice Gateway, Handsfree Voice Gateway
Paired: Yes
Favorite: Yes
Connected: No
Incoming Serial Ports:
Serial Port 1:
Name: Bluetooth-PDA-Sync
RFCOMM Channel: 3
Requires Authentication: Yes
Outgoing Serial Ports:
Serial Port 1:
Address:
Name: Bluetooth-Modem
RFCOMM Channel: 0
Requires Authentication: No

Under usb, the phone shows up as a k1m... the metafile in iSync shows support for a motorola k1 (with no m).

Any iSync gurus out there???

Anybody???

Verizon hobbles Bluetooth on their phones so that you are forced to use their VCast service. It's why I dumped them.

Actually, it depends on what you want to do with your phone. I use sync to sync my contacts and calender on my Verizon Motorola phone via bluetooth, but without trickery, you cant access the internet nor download/upload files. Take a look at howardforums.com for more info

All I want is contacts and calendars (though music would be nice). Mary, you can use iSync with a Motorola SLVR L7c? How? Or are you using a different phone?

itry2hide - I bought OnSync ($12 shareware), which syncs the contacts (no calendar), though the connection was a little flaky for me.

And I have successfully exchanged files (photos, so far) using the BlueTooth File Exchange (Browse Device... from the BlueTooth menu bar icon)

But this all just begs the question. If Onsync can exchange contact info and BlueTooth File Exchange works, why doesn't iSync or iTunes work with the L7c?

Question - have you tried to transfer ring tones? I can't...

I wrote a little iSync addition to the metaclass.plist that will allow one way sync from Mac to L7c of Address and Calendar. I have only tested it with OS 10.4.9 and iSync 2.4

Disclaimer: I make no guarantees that this modification will work for your phone. Proceed at your own risk, and I mean it. If you do anything incorrectly, you can completely disable iSync all together.

Backup iSync before even attempting this mod. Also, after you have typed in and saved the changes, you will have to either restart your computer, or force quit syncserver using activity monitor

To get to the iSync contents, right click on iSync and select "show package contents"

Here is the path - and good luck...
Applications/iSync/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist

<dict>
<key>com.motorola.CDMAL7cVerizon</key>
<dict>
<key>Identification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key>
<array>
<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2004"+L7c</string>
<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2004"+Motorola CDMA L7c phone</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
<array>
<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2004"+L7c</string>
<string>Motorola CE, Copyright 2000+Motorola CDMA L7c phone</string>
</array>
</dict>
<key>InheritsFrom</key>
<array>
<string>com.motorola.switchable-usb-bt.0x22B8/0x4902</string>
</array>
<key>Services</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.model</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>ModelIcon</key>
<string>MOTV8.tiff</string>
<key>ModelName</key>
<string>SLVR L7c</string>
</dict>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.synchro</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>stringEncoding</key>
<string>UCS2</string>
</dict>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.bluetooth</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>CloseBaseBandOnChannelSwitch</key>
<false/>
</dict>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>

Thanks, that worked great (though I think you have an extra <dict> at the beginning). Now is there similar magic to get iTunes to see the phone?

I've been lurking around, no luck. I'm not sure about the operating system on this phone. Someone mentioned that it is the Verizon BREW OS, which means java aps most likely won't work...

Still a little stuck. only a few calendar items sync'ed. no birthdays, almost no repeating events, day-long events appeared twice. Any workarounds here.

OK, I fixed most of my problems. Phone doesn't take all-day events. The double events were actually leftovers from my last phone's sync'ing problems, and all the repeating event problems were all-day events. So it's workable, just a minor pain.

Yeah, I had to change all of my all day events to a timed event. Other than that, everything works fine for one way syncing. I did notice that contacts will sync two ways, but not calendar events.

i'm sure someone much smarter than me will figure this out pretty soon...

Great work, itrytohide.

Which part of your plist code tells iSync to synchronise in one direction only? I have a Motorola RAZR V3c that I only ever want to sync in one direction. I don't trust iSync not to screw up, as I've had plenty of corruption caused by it wigging out before. I'd like to update my iSync plist, based upon your plist values, so that my phone only ever pulls and never pushes data back to my Mac.

The really frustrating thing about iSync is that it will tell you if a record is about to be updated, but it doesn't tell you which record, and you can't decide whether to accept or reject the change. That makes iSync very scary to use. Especially if you don't trust it not to corrupt all your data.

Thanks for any suggestions in advance,


Stephen Stephen

Good question. I don't know. In practice, I just don't add any events to my cell phone. I'm not so worried about contacts, as I maintain an online backup through Verizon...

Oh well, thanks anyway, itry2hide.

For now, I at least have a work-around: every time I want to synchronise my phone, I go into iSync, select the phone, and choose "Reset Device" from the Devices pull-down menu.

This works well for me, because I maintain all my calendar and address book information from my PowerBook. It might be considered quirky, but at least I can maintain a sense of control over my data.

Deleting, then reloading my contacts and calendars takes longer to synchronise, but I only do it once every week or two, and at least then I can be sure that iSync doesn't try anything funny.


Thanks again,


Stephen Stephen

U.S. Cellular
 

I recently purchased the L7c from U.S. Cellular and was having difficulty getting iSync to recognize it. I tried itry2hide's solution, to no avail. I did a little fiddling around and determined that my phone's identification differed from that which itry2hide gave.

My phone's details are:
Manufacturer: Motorola CE, Copyright 2000
Model: Motorola CDMA L7cm phone

Thus, the code I added to my Metaclasses.plist file looked like:

Everything else was the same.

Can someone walk me through how to use the metaclass.plist addition that itry2hide posted? I'm fairly certain my situation is the same, but i've never done anything like this before and i'm not sure how to include it. I just purchased a new slvr L7c yesterday, and I would really like to know how to sync it with a calender (preferrably the calender in entourage, but ical would work.) I'm less concerned about my contacts. I appreciate any help (My experience with programming is very limited).

I pasted in the string that Try2Hide graciously provided. I get not results. Phone still is incompatible with isync. Perhaps i did something wrong. I too could use a bit more detail. When you get to that final destination to paste in the code. does one delete first all the code found there? Or insert the code somewhere?

there are a few questions here...

thanks,

Langnickle

Anyone got any updates on this? I'm stuck...Verizon L7c, and I can't get it to work with iSync at all....

Solved!
 

Just wanted to post an update - I did get this to work finally. Basically - I think I just needed a restart after changing the plist file(which I don't remember having to do before..) anyway.. I removed entire "com.motorola.L7" entry that is in the plist file by default, and replaced it with this. I beleive the only actual changes are to line 1, and then adding "<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2004"+Motorola CDMA L7c phone</string>" in 2 placing..but I haven't looked that closley. It works though.

Relevant System info:

Verizon SLVR L7c phone
Macbook 2Ghz Core 2 Duo
Mac OS X 10.4.10
iSync 2.4
Phone software: 24.1_01.08.03



<key>com.motorola.CDMAL7cVerizon</key>
<dict>
<key>Identification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key>
<array>
<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2004"+L7c</string>
<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2004"+Motorola CDMA L7c phone</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
<array>
<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2004"+L7c</string>
<string>Motorola CE, Copyright 2000+Motorola CDMA L7c phone</string>
</array>
</dict>
<key>InheritsFrom</key>
<array>
<string>com.motorola.switchable-usb-bt.0x22B8/0x4902</string>
</array>
<key>Services</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.model</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>ModelIcon</key>
<string>MOTV8.tiff</string>
<key>ModelName</key>
<string>SLVR L7c</string>
</dict>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.synchro</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>stringEncoding</key>
<string>UCS2</string>
</dict>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.bluetooth</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>CloseBaseBandOnChannelSwitch</key>
<false/>
</dict>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>

I bought the phone yesterday. Did get it to Sync and found this posting. Thanks to everyone who worked on this isync issue with the L7. I did mine and it worked great after some futzing around.

Thank you all. I'm now happy that I bought this phone.

Motorola L7c woes
 

Using: Motorola L7c (Verizon), OS 10.4.10, iSync 2.4.

I modified the plist file, but to no avail. Are there any steps I might be overlooking? I overwrote the com.motorola.l7 entry, just as chriscaldes suggested, then rebooted the machine. Unfortunately, when I try to "Add Device" in iSync, it scans, pairs with my phone, but then comes up with a message "This device is not supported by iSync". I tried removing my phone from the "Devices" tab in the bluetooth pane of System Preferences and re-adding it, but it still doesn't show support for the sync of contacts and/or calendars. The only "service" it comes up with is "access the internet with your phone's data connection".

Any help is welcome... Thanks.

-Pjonesmoody