Mini-usb On Newer Motorola Phones

[autonomous_unit]

I am considering one of these EDGE-capable Motorola V360 phones, which apparently does not come with a data cable but has a "mini USB" socket for charging and computer connections. Does anyone know for sure what the requirements are for this? Is this a standard type of USB cable I should be able to find anywhere, or does it still require some Motorola-specific part? Does it show up as a standard USB serial device when in data/fax mode? I use Linux and so have no interest in paying a premium for a standard cable and a CD-ROM of useless Windows/Motorola software.

The folks at Jaymart were not able to answer my question, and other places I tried in the local mall said to go ask Jaymart.

I haven't bought a new phone in a long time, so I am most familiar with all the proprietary data cables, i.e. USB on one end and some specific set of phone models supported on the other end. I am hoping I am just old-fashioned, and these mini USB connections are really a standard, but I find it impossible to find any explicit statement one way or the other! I even failed to find anything in the V360 PDF manual I downloaded...

[Guest endure]

I've got a Motorola V3 which uses the mini-usb connector. It seems to be a standard one as I've used the cable from a Nikon camera to connect it to my PC. One thing to be aware of is that (using Windows XP) the phone will not charge through the PC until the drivers from the Motorola CD are installed - we get the CD and cable as part of the package in the UK.

[autonomous_unit]

Thanks, that's what I was hoping to hear! Maybe I will just buy one and try to use our Canon camera cable first...

As for the charging, I had heard about that and am hoping that this is just a matter of how XP decides to handle the USB power negotiation, i.e. not enabling the power level requested until the driver is available. On Linux, the driver model tends to be a little more generic, so I hope it will auto-negotiate the power for charging. A few years ago, I had to do custom configuration to get my V66 phone recognized as a USB serial device, but it just happens automatically with moderm Linux kernels... those programmers catch up pretty quickly.