Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

When the internet is down, N95 saves the day.

Published
by
fernando
on June 2, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

modem

This saturday, my modem decided to die, just after business hours too, so I’d have to wait until monday to order a new one. So it was up to my phone to keep me connected meanwhile. And, surprisingly for anyone who tryed to tether an older phone (memories of my 6600 :p), it was incredibly straight forward!

I started connecting my phone to my mac in PC Suite mode, just to see what would happen, I figured I’d have to download thousands of drivers and whatnot, but that was not the case. As soon as I opened the Network prefpane, a new connection appeared on the sidebar:

A couple settings after, and I was connected! The only thing that slowed me down for a while was the modem type, but that was solved pretty quickly by clicking the Advanced… button and selecting the right “vendor” from the drop down menu:

So there, I was online again, kudos to whoever at Nokia or at Apple who made this so simple. The only downside to all of this really is the speed

I really wouldn’t mind having a N95-3 now. :P

OPDA’s MenuEditor

Published
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fernando
on May 3, 2008
in Uncategorized
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..or finally a reason to hack the permissions on my N95!

After all that trouble in making past posts about ordering your folders in place, and why wouldn’t S60 allow you to create folders with icons, bugb at OPDA.net.cn finally make an app to do it. Even if it needs a little hacking prior to using it…

First you need to hack the permissions in order to gain access to all files on your phone, then download a allfiles capable file browser (such as X-Plore or ActiveFile, my favorite) then copy a certificate and key to a certain folder, and finally selfsign the MenuEditor sis with OPDA’s Mobile Signer. I won’t explain about those things here, but feel free to google around for guides.

But once you have all set, you can alter any folder’s icon and name, and choose from a list of all icons on device. and you can also make special folders that change their name when you change the phone’s language, much like the default ones.

Here’s all the different folder icons from the default N95 ones:

And if you know me, you know that I love having an organized and “iconized” menu. I already changed the more apps folder to the blue square, and the games folder to the dice one. And I’m going to make a GPS folder right now!

All the folder names, icons and better explanation of how they work are at OPDA.net.cn and this app was found via pretty much any underground symbian site. I’d offer a download link, but as it depends on how you hacked your phone, I’ll just link to symbian freak, as they have 3 versions of the file.

New Picodrive S60 version!

Published
by
fernando
on March 30, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 4 Comments

A week from last friday, our favorite emulator developer AnotherGuest released a new version of Picodrive S60, based on Notaz’s GP2x source code, and it’s totally awesome. Here’s a video I made of it in action, how the sound syncs perfectly now:

Highlights:

  • Perfect sound! (see the last version for comparison, awful video)
  • Future SegaCD/MegaCD support!
  • Multiple savestates
  • Better landscape rendering?
  • Loading times increased :(
  • Finally a non-pixelated icon :P

This version was released at My-Symbian forums, but the download is for registered members only, so I mirrored it here.

S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 review

Published
by
fernando
on March 16, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

The english version of M-r review is out, go read it!

http://www.mobile-review.com/review/nokia-s60-fp2-full-en.shtml

S60 inverse landscape

Published
by
fernando
on March 8, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

landscape2

Recently I found out about this Landscape Pro V2 that allows you to rotate your s60’s screen both ways, and I wondered how did the app handle it? Manual turning or did S60 had a secret inverse landscape mode?

Turns out that it is the former, and now I’m trying to documentate the differences between the behavior of certain app.

screes

It unlocks the N95 8GB exclusive landscape screensaver, but it actually shows up upside down when holding the N95 270º (just the way it shows up in the N95 8gb).

Menu acts oddly too, it can show up two ways:

screenshot0045.jpg

Normal landscape view (but the softkeys are inverted in this view, meaning the up left one is options and the right one is exit, just like normal portrait.) (This also happens with custom UI apps, like Nokia Maps 2.0)

Or it can also show up as the native inverse landscape orientation (!!!)

screenshot0047.jpg

In this way the softkeys are normal and apps act just like normal landscape, just that the blue bars are inverted.

Other example of the native inverse landscape mode:

screenshot0049.jpg

Now for the even weirder things, as you know the front camera app forces the phone to go to portrait mode when opened in the normal landscape mod, but it allows itself to show up on the inverse landscape:

screenshot0048.jpg

(This showed up upside down in the N95, with the inverted softkeys, just like the menu)

The regular camera also handles this new orientation surprisingly well:

screenshot0051.jpg

Just the softkeys stuck to the left side of the screen, like the should to stay near the real keys, expected behaviour.

screenshot0052.jpg

(btw,the image shows upside down, because there is no way of rotating the sensor, of course)

And then, there’s a couple apps that just screw up everything, for example Device Status (rip :(), didn’t recognize any key press, besides the review/gallery key, so I couldn’t take a screenshot, but when turning it into portrait it showed up like this:

screenshot0050.jpg

And then there is just some bugs that will probably be ironed out when this landscape mode comes out (FP2?!?), like rotating via software to inverse landscape and then manually to portrait (opening the slide) give you this:

screenshot0053.jpg

So this is what I have discovered about this mode until now, I had to restart my phone and it is turning on again right now :P But again, I’m impressed of how well S60 handles a screen orientation that isn’t supposed to be there! Ah the benefits of a mature platform!

Edit: N-Gage app also looks weird:

screenshot0056.jpg

It was physically upside down when launched in the inverse landscape mode. So I can assume that every app that forces the phone into portrait mode (N-Gage, screensaver, front camera) will screw up the screen. And if the N-Gage app doesn’t know how to react to this inverse landscape mode it doesn’t give me hope that we’ll see this mode in FP2… Ah well, maybe in Touch.

Comparing search methods

Published
by
fernando
on March 2, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

Recently Google launched it’s own native mobile search app for S60 phones, which was reviewed here by AAS, which was recieved badly by bloggers and enthusiasts, example: IntoMobile’s Stefan post.

But people don’t realize that this app is competing not with the internal browser (which btw, setting google as your homepage is cheating), it’s rival is Nokia’s own Search app, and it completely kicks its ass. See the videos below for comparison. I also measured the time between the first keystroke to when ebay starts loading in the browser.

Nokia Search app, 53 seconds

Google Search app, 13 seconds (and just because I missed the link when clicking in the browser =P)

And just for fun

Browser Bookmark, 24 seconds

You can take your own conclusions, my personal choice is the google bookmark, since it’s moderately fast and it doesn’t have a ugly shortcut like the Google app.

For me, if the google app had a standard standby plugin (which Nokia really need to open the api for) it would be a killer app.If only because it opens and connects the browser in the background, while you’re typing. So when you’re searching for big things, it takes off a HUGE part of the loading process.

And this again shows what a joke Nokia Search is. They should tear apart the device search and the web search, to make the web part faster. (But I still love the device search feature).

EDIT: To demonstrate why the pre-loading of the browser in the Google app is awesome, here’s two videos with a larger search string:

Rumors with Google Search, 18 seconds

Rumors with Browser, 31 seconds

The difference is that when you open the browser it stops to connect, the “Connecting via internets” dialog you see. In the Google app it connects on the background, definitely speeding up the process.

Does FP2 get rid of the title icons?

Published
by
fernando
on March 1, 2008
in Uncategorized
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I noticed something while looking through M-r FP2 review (only in russian for now). FP2 is removing the icons that go besides the name of the app in the title bar. For example this:

There’s no arrows icon besides the Log name.

This looks like a bad decision in my opinion, since apps that do have that will look unconsistent with the rest of the phone, like Quickoffice

They also seem to be using the icon space for smaller descriptive icons of the current action, like in messages, discerning Text from audio messages

And in IM to show the status.

In my opinion this change is for worse, and there is no technical excuse, since icons are vector graphics.

My only hope is that they took out the icons to remake simple forms of them, like the messages one, but I’m not counting on it.

Edit: Just noticed FP1 already has the IM status indicator little icon!

screenshot0054.jpg

That doesn’t mean much, but as I never noticed it, I can post about it :P

Themes Launcher for N95

Published
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fernando
on February 22, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Following in my pursuit of the perfect menu, I came across this (actually it was because of SF :P), a Themes app replacement icon. As V20 of the N95 firmware and the following Nseries removed the themes icon and makes you go 3 menu levels deep in the settings to find it. This brings the icon back.

themesdawtapp

Sure, the icon looks kinda funky (:P), but it’s the best solution until now (my previous solution was just put a themes shortcut on the multimedia menu, as I don’t use that menu for nothing)

Download it here.

More FP2 new functions.

Published
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fernando
on February 18, 2008
in Uncategorized
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That’s why FP2 rocks!

Loads of screenshots, this time from AAS galleries of the N96 and N78:

Url Autocompletion and possible browser revamping.

Album art should now be better supported (current Music player only shows album art if it specified as the Front Cover). Finally!

Photos app (good riddance Gallery!)

Tag cloud in Photos app.

View geotagged pictures in Nokia Maps.

Remote drive (but I still don’t know which protocol they’re using, here’s hoping for SMB)

Revamped Internet settings…

…with access point grouping…

…by priority!

Changing skins from the main menu!

Transitions.

And standby modes.

That’s all new cool features from FP2 that I could gather from the AAS galleries. I’ll be definitely getting a N96 or N78!

Active Standby

Published
by
fernando
on February 3, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 5 Comments

Look what I’ve found, Share Online 3.0 has a active standby plugin:

ss34

Nokia, don’t waste active standby plugins on things like this, just make an api, and put that organizing feature from Eseries in every S60, I couldn’t care less about the search shortcut, but would love a email preview.

Edit: One more :P

screenshot0039.jpg