TamsS60 – the Symbian Blog

symbian-freak has uncovered a way to improve the N97’s GPS significantly – it involves adding a short piece of wire to the GPS module’s antenna (which is located in the back cover of the handset).

This increases the length of the antenna closer to the ideal length for GPS; and thus improves signal reception.

As the whole change could theoretically be accomplished via a new battery cover, I dare to bet that Nokia might eventually unleash a “second revision” of the battery cover which gets shipped with later production models (and gets sent to customers who complain about low accuracy). Of course, all of this is speculation for now – but there’s little to loose here as you can just purchase a second back cover before sending your handset to Nokia for warranty repairs!

The video below contains further information:

News about a firmware update (v30) for the XPressMusic 5800 have been floating around the interwebs for some time – unfortunately, the firmware can not be installed via NSU. The screenshot below was made about two minutes ago, and shows Nokia Software Update stating that the outdated firmware is still current:

Fortunately, a workaround exists – it is called OTA firmware updates and is described here in further detail. As usual, expect a download volume of about 4500kB for the latest firmware – not too bad if you ask me…

Bluetooth keyboards have once been extremely interesting: almost every Palm user has had one. Unfortunately, the drivers used were provided by the manufacturers rather than the operating system builders…which has led to a plethora of incompatibilities.

Fortunately, Nokia seems to be hell-bent on implementing the HID standard: while the driver is not complete as of this writing, it is nevertheless said to work pretty well. AllAboutSymbian has got further information – it can be downloaded here…

Don’t ask me why the Nokia N96 has a tiny 950mAh battery – the N-Series folks generally seem to enjoy making crazy decisions. Usually, third-party manufacturers step up and produce expanded batteries which either have a more effective chemistry or require a new back plate.

Nokia could do the latter themselves according to TheSymbianBlog – this particularly daring colleague of mine simply took a BL-6F battery from another phone and found out that it fits the N96.

The contacts and physical size actually fit in perfectly – the only problematic thing is the backplate, which bends out slightly when the phone is shut.

Hit the link above for a video and further info – I guess that I will be out to get such a battery shortly…

Recent N-Series devices have shipped with a pretty weird bardcode scanner in ROM. I always wondered what it does – and can now present a solution!

The tool in question can decode a variety of proprietary bar code formats which can be used to store up to 60 characters of text. For example: a vcard can be encoded, and the resulting code can be printed on the back of a business card to simplify data acquisition.

Hit the URL below to get started:
http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/

Via SymbianOne

I have recently had to travel by train a lot due to personal issues: regaining the time lost traveling by working on new content for my dear readers is a way to better cope with the hardship. Unfortunately, my trusty old Nokia N71 (powered by Hutchison/three) has issues keeping a connection stable while the train is moving fast.

However, this wouldn’t be Tamss60 if we wouldn’t have a solution: I observed that my EDGE-only Treo 680 had no such issues. It thus looks like UMTS signals are more sensitive to movement and unsuitable terrain – forcing the phone into a GSM/GPRS-only mode could theoretically help.

Easily said, quickly done – follow the steps below:

Open Settings
The first step involves opening the phones Settings application, and navigating to the network tab:

Disable UMTS
Adjust the settings so that they look like in the screenshot below – but be prepared that the phone will reboot once to reset itself:

Once the reboot is done, your phone is restricted to non-3G networks. It will log into the Hutchison network without issues, but will work at slower and more stable 2G/2.5G frequencies.

Now that my N71 is restricted to GPRS, it works a little more slowly – but I have yet to see a connection breakdown. The train already drove through a few tunnels, and the network stayed up…if that isn’t a good tradeoff, what is?

Our friends at HP’s have recently provided the TamsPPC team with a sample of an OfficeJet 470 (we had to return it – don’t worry ). Having such a box in-house of course makes me curious to find out which gadget prints the best…surprisingly, the winner is my good ole’ N71.

The device connected to the OfficeJet via Bluetooth without needing drivers, printing software or anything else – it just connected and started spitting out useful stuff. Click the images below for full page scans:

Calendar
Calendar print-outs arrive in an outlook-like grid. As for the color scheme: it will likely make HP very happy due to the high amount of blue ink used…the design is debatable and cannot be changed:

Contacts
Contact printouts turn out surprisingly well. Notes get truncated weirdly – but the printouts can definitely be given to low-tech folk who need the contact:

Text messages/notes
Text messages and notes share the weird color layout – but turn out usable:

Images
The device seems to insist on placing the images in the center of the page – stretching them across a A4 page is not possible. Nevertheless, the images from the internal 2MP camera can look very usable in 10×15 – my family has received quite a few and likes them very much:

Cutting a long story short: the N71 cannot hide its EPOC roots and does an excellent job handling all kinds of print job. People who have a bluetooth printer will be happy to know this, everybody else should IMHO pass it off as a novelty item. Even though the 470 is transportable and battery-powered, the machine IMHO is WAY to heavy to be transported around all the time. People having two flats will appreciate it, however…

ClearType antialiasing technology has been included into Windows Mobile for quite some time (head over to our sister site TamsPPC for an explanation). Some S60v3 phones support this technology, too – but lack options to turn the function on and off.

Mark Guim from TheNokiaBlog created a detailed write-up analyzing the tweaks and settings found in the S60v3 font engine – give him a click at the link below for the full scoop:
http://thenokiablog.com/2008/07/07/how-to-change-back-to-smoother-fonts-on-the-north-american-nokia-n95-8gb-using-fontrouter-lt/

AllAboutSymbian’s Steve Litchfield has found a way to fix the plethora of Flash-related problems that plague E90’s that received the recent firmware update.

Essentially, the method involves performing an additional hard reset and testing the Flash functionality. If it works, the device may be restored from scratch.

Even though this definitely isn’t what I call comfortable, it seems to be a workable method nevertheless. If anyone of you has an E90, good luck and good fun – I did something similar with my Treo a few days ago…

Our sister site TamsPPC has just posted a tutorial on connecting a Series 60v3 phone to a PocketPC; thereby allowing the PocketPC to use the phone’s internet connection:
http://tamsppc.tamoggemon.com/2007/12/03/link-up-a-pocket-pc-with-a-nokia-n71-for-internet-access/

For me, this is especially useful as it grants Skype access on the go – no idea why Nokia didn’t provide a native Skype client yet, but my ipaq can skype really well over the N71’s 3G link! The delay is noticeable, but manageable…

Ever since phones with camera LED’s hit the market, users debated if the LED’s really had any ‘reson-d-etre’ except acting as a torch. The images below were made with a Nokia N71 in a room approximately 10m wide; and are uploaded in an unaltered fashion(click for full version):

Night mode
With flash

Without flash

Normal mode
With flash

Without flash

In the end, none of the four pictures can really compete with a digital camera – but that’s not what a mobile phone camera is intended to do IMHO. The images shot in normal mode are almost worthless; the LED flash barely managed to light up my suit 1.5m away. Night mode images still have very high noise levels(see fullsize images); but are bright enough to be at least barely usable. The LED flash did nothing except distort the colors of my suit.

Thus, today’s lesson is: if you can keep the camera steady long enough, use night mode – your images will become significantly better! The LED flash did not show beneficial effects anywhere – let’s just keep using it as torch…

Our review of Opera 8.65 for Series 60 mentioned that opening an existing link in a new window is not possible as of now. However, thanks to TamsS60 reader Qasim, I can now present you a way to make it work.

Open the settings form of Opera, then navigate to the shortcuts tab. There, choose your key of choice – and assign it to Open in new Window.

From now on, pressing this key when a link is highlighted will do just that – enjoy!

T-Mobile Austria’s configuration for the Nokia N71 is made available on request. It works…but annoyingly terminates your GPRS/UMTS connection after approximately 5 minutes without data transfer. If you use an application like PuTTY for Symbian, this can become very annoying…but TamsS60 has a solution for you:

Open the Settings application and go into the connection sub-menu:

There, choose Data Call. Set Online time to unlimited…it should look like in the picture below:

With these ‘modifications’ in place, my N71 stays connected happily to a SSH server for hours without any activity – adios, network timeouts!