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Use your T610 as a GPRS Bluetooth modem paired with an Axim X50v to send and receive SMS and e-mail, browse the Web, receive faxes, update WorldMate weather and currency rates, etc...

Step 1: Linking to the Bluetooth modem

Turn on Bluetooth on both devices and from the Today screen open Bluetooth Settings by tapping on the Bluetooth icon in the bottom right corner of the X50v screen. Make sure the Accessibility tab looks like this then tap (OK):

From the Today screen open Bluetooth Manager by tapping on the Bluetooth icon in the bottom right corner of the X50v screen. Tap New and in the Bluetooth connection Wizard that opens tap "Connect to Internet via phone":

In the next "Step 1" screen just tap Next to leave the default phone selection "Unknown, or phone not listed". The following "Step 2" screen is informative, so tap Next again. See an icon representing your T610? Good:

Now tap the icon and enter a passkey at the prompt (e.g. a 1-4 digit number):

When you tap Next your T610 should ask you if you want to add DELL AXIM X50 to My devices. Hit yes on the T610, enter the same passkey you just entered on the Dell, and push (OK). Eyes back to the X50v and you should see the following screen, asking if you want to make this your default connection to the Internet. I left this unchecked since I'll mostly be using WiFi (details here):

Tap Next and then Finish. You should be taken to My Shortcuts, showing an icon representing your T610 dial-up networking connection, which you may admire briefly before closing the window in preparation for Step 2:

Step 2: Connection settings for Vodafone UK GPRS

On the X50v go to Start > Settings > Connections and open the Connections application:

Tap "Add a new modem connection", give it a name, and select "Bluetooth Dialup Modem" from the drop-down menu:

Tap Next and enter the phone number "*99#" (without the quotes) before tapping Next again:

In the next screen ignore the username and password fields and tap "Advanced". Increase the baud rate to 115200 and enter the following dial string:

+cgdcont=1,"ip","pp.vodafone.co.uk"

Note that this is the Pay As You Go APN; on the Palm I use "internet" (details) but this did not work here!

Other options in this and the other tabs can be left as per the defaults:

Close Advanced options by tapping (OK) and then Finish. Tap (OK) followed by (X) to
exit Settings.

Step 3: Establish a connection

From the Today screen open Bluetooth Manager by tapping on the Bluetooth icon in the bottom right corner of the X50v screen. Tap and hold on the T610: Dial-up Networking icon to bring up the Connect menu:

If you didn't set this as your default Internet connection, you should be offered the chance to select a connection to use:

Tap (OK) and at the Network Log On screen make sure username and password are blank and "Save password" is checked (doing so will prevent this from showing again during a connection attempt, although it doesn't seem to matter if there is anything entered here or not). Tap (OK). If all has gone well you should see a connection icon which you can tap in order to see how long the connection has been live, or in order to disconnect:

E-mail with Gmail

Using Gmail on my Palm T3 required the purchase of extra software as Palm neglected to provide the required 0.1 version upgrade to T3 owners. With PPC 2003 this isn't so; a Gmail account capable of sending and receiving SSL-secured messages is very easy to set up in Messenger:

Web surfing with Internet Explorer

Browsing the web via GPRS takes an age, but choosing your URL carefully can help. For example, here is the main Google homepage vs. the optimised XHTML version:

SMS

Initially I couldn't make it work (not sure why) and the interface won't win any prizes, but the freeware easySMS is capable of receiving SMS messages from my T610 and allowing me to type them on the X50v before sending. It doesn't support sending or receiving MMS but there are plenty of feature-rich shareware alternatives that do:

Receiving faxes and voicemail

Following my instructions for Palm here, it was easy to configure Messenger for Vodafone Mail. Resco Photo Viewer can handle multi-page faxes that are received in TIFF format. Voicemails are received as attached .wav files. Unfortunately these will not playback in Resco Audio Recorder nor Windows Media Player, but TCPMP is able to handle them: