SIM Card Connection

SMS Studio uses serial connection to connect a mobile device. Whatever the type of serial connection is used (RS232, IrDA, USB or Bluetooth), the system will always assign one COM port number for each device. You can use Control Panel or Device Manager to learn the COM port number assigned to your device.

SIM Card account represents a SIM card physically inserted into the mobile device (phone or modem).

While the computer is establishing a connection to the device, SMS Studio detects the SIM card inserted in the phone. If the account for that SIM card does not already exist, it will be automatically created. In order to uniquely identify a SIM card, SMS Studio uses one of the identifiers in the following order: IMSI number of the SIM card, subscriber's phone number or IMEI number of the device itself. It depends solely on the phone model which identifiers could possibly be obtained.

Identifying the SIM card and associating it with an account is important for several reasons:

• You can connect the same SIM card using different mobile phones (even with different connection parameters), and the application will always know which SIM card is actually connected.
• SIM card will always use its own account parameters (e.g. SMS center number, session type etc).
• SIM card provides its own statistics (the number of the sent and the received messages).
• You can disallow sending the messages for specific SIM card (e.g. if the price is unacceptable).

SIM Card Connection Dialog

See Connection Dialog for description of the Connection, Account and Options tabs.

Phone tab

• COM Port lets you choose the COM port number used to connect the phone.
• Type specifies the type of the phone.
  
  Additional parameters vary according to the selected phone type:
   

• GSM AT phone type for GSM AT compatible devices:

• Baud rate lets you choose the baud rate at which the application will communicate with device.

• Mode specifies the mode used to send and receive messages. Note that this setting is only used to inform the phone of the desired mode. It is up to the phone to decide whether it supports an option and whether it will use the suggested mode.
  Sending: In the standard mode, the phone sends messages according to its own settings. The Fast send option instructs the phone to keep the network link opened for a while after sending a single message. In this way the sending of consecutive messages may be significantly faster.
  Receiving: In the standard mode, the phone stores newly received message in its inbox and notifies the application about the new message arrival. Then the application reads the message from the phone and instructs the phone to delete it from its inbox. In the Fast receive mode, the phone is instructed not to store the message in its inbox, but to forward it directly to the application. In this way the unnecessary overhead in the phone (for storing, reading and deleting messages) and in the communication between the application and the phone is avoided, and, therefore, the receiving of messages may be significantly faster.
  Custom: In this mode SMS Studio will not try to automatically adjust the phone settings.

• Settings lets you specify the settings that are used in the custom mode. Note that the custom mode should only be used if none of the other available modes is working with your specific phone model.

• Nokia Type 1, 2 and 3 phone types for Nokia phones with FBUS protocol supported:

• Cable type lets you specify the type of the cable you are using to connect the phone.

Settings tab

• SMS Center displays the SMS Center number collected from the phone.
• Message validity displays message validity value collected from the phone.
• Use custom SMS Center settings specifies whether to use the custom SMS Center settings for sending SMS messages. If this option is checked you can set custom SMS center number and message validity value to be used with this SIM card.
• SMS Center displays the custom SMS Center number.
• Message validity displays the custom message validity value.
• SMS alphabet specifies SMS alphabet you wish to be used to send SMS messages.
• Collect messages from phone periodically specifies whether to automatically collect any new messages from phone upon connecting and then periodically with the same period as specified in the Check link every option. If the Check link every is set to Never, default collecting period is 5 minutes.
• Do not remove received messages from phone allows you to keep received messages in the phone. If this option is not checked, the application removes all received messages from the phone to keep its inbox empty and ready for new messages. Note that this option has no meaning when Fast receive mode is used with GSM AT phone type.
• Use 16-bit reference number for concatenated messages specify whether to use 16-bit instead of 8-bit reference number for sending concatenated messages. Note that the 16-bit number uses one more byte in the outgoing frame, so it may decrease the number of available characters in the message.