There it is, running normally.

Summary: Just to let it clear from the start, while I could install the app, I couldn’t play any games. Leaving this warning right in the top of the post might save you some reading time. :P

I always wondered what would happen if I installed N-Gage on my 5800 ever since I saw a video of it running pretty well on an N97. I had tried it a couple times, but with no success, as I didn’t have the right installation file. Then a week or so ago, Nokia released the N-Gage sis for N97s via the software updater app. Not long after that, the standalone .sis was floating around teh interblags. I got it, and after a few things, I had the app running, this post has my impressions of the app and the how to on installing it.

First thing, of course, is getting the N97 sis. A quick google search for “N-Gage N97 sis” found me it fairly fast, but I’ll still link where I got my copy from.

Then, I opened it with one of my favorite tools, SISContents, to check the installer script and see where’s the beef causing it to not install properly on phones. Or, I wanted to remove the N97 only lock.

The script

First thing to check: dependencies. As pointed by the first red arrow, the only dependency is Series60ProductID, which is basically a way for installers to differ between S60 and UIQ phones (as far as I know!) so the problem wasn’t there. However, as pointed by the second arrow, the whole script is a giant IF block, it checks if the phone passes those requirements, and if not, it skips the IF block. 4 of the requirements are MachineUID checks, if the phone is not a N97 (0x20014DD*) or that other UID which doesn’t match any phone (as far as I know), the installation fails.

Knowing what to change, I extracted the .sis with SISContents.

The secret is clicking the little arrow :o

Being careful to avoid messing with the internal file structure, or extract the internal .sis files.

This option only appears if you click extract thru the little arrow, lol

For simplicity’s sake, I moved all files that were extracted to C:\, making it simpler to edit the script file later.

How my C: looked after all that.

• With all the files ready, it’s time to edit the .pkg. As I noted before, I had to do a find and replace to change all mentions of the N97 Machine UID (0x20014DDD) for the 5800s (0x2000DA56).
• Also, as SISContents does not save file paths on the .pkg, I had to find and replace all things like “folder\ for “C:\folder\ and “@sisfile.sis for “@C:\sisfile.sis so they actually point somewhere on my hard drive (just adding the C:\ is simpler, that’s why I moved everything to it).
• And at last, my copy of makesis.exe was apparently choking on all the languages the pkg mentioned, so I removed all languages except for &EN, also removing extra localized names for the installation file (leaving just one {“N-Gage”}), for the dependencies (leaving just one {“Series60ProductID”}) and the vendor names (leaving just one {“Nokia”}). This last part sounds a little too complicated (is where I got confused at first too), so I’ll leave an example of how the headers looked in the final .pkg

; Languages
&EN
; Package header
#{"N-Gage"}, (0x20003B78), 1, 30, 1541, TYPE=SA
; Dependencies
[0x1028315F], 0, 0, 0, {"Series60ProductID"}
; Vendor names
%{"Nokia"}:"Nokia"

Or, just to make it simpler, I’ll link my final edited .pkg (save as, etc) here, make sure to edit it to reflect the right paths on your computer if you’re using it.

Anyway, now with the files in their right places, and the .pkg edited to allow the 5800, it’s time to build the .sis. You need the standard makesis.exe for 3rd/5th edition files, it’s easy to find as it comes with the sdk, but I uploaded the one I used just in case. Throw it in the same directory as the files and the .pkg, and use the following command from the folder, “makesis.exe -v N-Gage.pkg N-Gage.sis”

Running it from C: in my case, don't mind the ¥, backslashes show up as ¥ signs in my virtual machine.

Sooooo after all that work, if everything’s done right, you get a (unsigned) N-Gage.sis file, sign it or install it in your hacked phone, and there you have it. (I won’t link my finished .sis because I’m afraaaid ooo, hacking is supposedly illegal no?) 700+ words already and I just got to the middle of the post, lol.

The home tab

As I said earlier in the post, lots of things don’t work, in the next couple screenshots I’ll show things of interest.

The app itself has no problem with the phone being a 5800.

Arena does mind, though. You can't log in or make a new account without getting this error.

Same for the Store, you get an empty store as they don't have content for a 5800.

With no working store, I resorted to downloading a .n-gage installation file from n-gage.com. There’s the save a .n-gage file on E:/n-gage/ on the phone installation method…

...which apparently does work!

Oops, never mind~

No matter what I did, I kept getting this error. Must be the generic “game panicked on launch” error. It installed fine, so I assume it’s an hardcoded device limitation. Note that I haven’t tried other games besides Bounce, so maybe one works. Gotta try some more later.

Another thing of interest, at least for me, is that the app seems much more snappy on the 5800 than on my N95. It does look similar, but different, in a good way. I like the way they adapted the app for touchscreens. So there’s a +1 for the N-Gage team.

Last thing I found funny, was the check for updates option, which opens this link. Even though the URL mentions the 5800 clearly, the page just calmly says there’s no update, with no errors or anything. lol.

So there you have it, a ~1000 words post that’s basically a diary for myself: A huge guide and impressions of something that in the end, does not work. It was still kinda fun to mess with it last night, and there’s still hope that some games don’t have the same device check on launch as Bounce. Although, as I mentioned, I’m kinda lazy to test all other games. So in case someone does have the patience to do what I did and finds a game that works, please leave a comment telling me about it! lol

All visible updates I noticed in one screenshot.

Early this morning, reports of a new Nokia 5800 firmware echoed through the internets. I thought I’d wait until it’s confirmed hackeable, as I always do. But after a couple conflicting reports I decided to try for myself. OTA firmware update, same experience as V21.

• First impression: if you get an endless rebooting phone, take out the memory card. That fixed it for me, and I can reboot normally now. (It was scary as heck though.)
• The keypad and contacts app shortcuts on the homescreen are a lighter gray, as of V1x instead of the darker gray they were on V2x.
• Same for the number keys inside the keypad app.
• The My Nokia icon (shown above in the first shortcut slot) was updated. (I think :P)
• Adjusting the music player’s volume is MUCH more responsible, the volume slider appears on tapping the album artwork area, and the volume slider now appears in the homescreen when you press the volume keys.
• Was that log bug that every entry showed up as a mobile icon still around? If so, it’s fixed now.
• Supposedly there’s a new messaging plugin for the homescreen. Apparently it requires a hard reset to show up though, and I’m not resetting my phone! :P
• My patches (installserver and open4all) are still working.

Can’t say anything for UI speed or free ram, as those are subjective/can vary a lot depending on what you have installed.

Post will be updated if I find a reliable changelog or if I notice anything else or if I decide to suck it up and hard reset the phone.

First OTA firmware update I install ever! Took a screenshot of the installation process too.

Yaaaay.

Now for the alleged change log that’s been floating around, seems pretty accurate, so it must be true.

Following BUGS are fixed,

• Lock code does not work after FOTA update
• Logs: Info cannot be seen in missed calls if name includes special characters
• The envelope icon doesn’t open after reading the sms
• Autolock requested via MfE but not activated
• MPX harvester server crash with DRM files
• Oper. menu application icon missing after NSU update
• CDP Displays: CDP Clock and Data Have To Be Transmitted 2 Frames Before Sleep Out (SLPOUT 11h) Command
• “Program closed: Idle” after Restoring factory settings
• Video telephone: Phone reboots after tap call button several times when answer an incoming video call
• Music Player crashes when user tries to refresh Real audio into Music library
• Dialer: The cursor is not displayed in dialer panel
• Audio disappears after playing music long time with BT
• Music player the album art in Now Playing view is downscaled
• Access point password is not provisionable
• Voice commands application crashes after language change
• Synchronization cannot be done using PC Suite Sync application
• FL3.0: Inline Text editing from browser plugin is not successful
• Browser does not show some MIME-types of type image correctly
• Browser: Not possible to move the cursor when typing in a <textarea> field
• Browser: Page scroll wobbles if user scrolls with flash while page is in scroll motion
• Browser: Page does not scroll if drag is started from the edge of flash window
• Browser: Page scroll does not work after stopping going to new page opened via flash banner
• Bluetooth causing extra current consumption when activated
• Predictive search not working properly in country selection
• Music Player application crashes if album art is selected to be changed
• Duplicate contacts after restore
• Music Player: White screen displayed if change orientation between landscape and portable mode
• MO/MT calls will not work when restoring backup from old phone to more recent version

NEW FEATURES AND APPLICATIONS

• Notification Lights according to Nokia Design specification
• Touch usability improvements:
  • Finger touch support for Special Character Table
  • Size of arrows (tab pane & navi pane) in touch UI
  • Arrows in forms, date & time selection, touch UI
  • Profile, date area in touch UI
• Calendar Finger usability: change single row list items in day view wider
• Screen does not dim when rotated, with theme effects on, hence the snappier UI.

I can confirm that the album art in the music player is a decent size again, those little arrows’ on the top had their hitbox size increased (yay!) and that there is a new special character table:

Neat! Now to hard reset and see if I pick anything else.

Anyway, with the installation behind me, yes, the new firmware is awesome, fast (finally leaving the transitions on is worth it!) they fixed a lot of those blue default S60 icons (yay!), a new app updater, new dictionary (yay!), and etc…

But that, folks, is the true new awesomeness. I ranted so much (so much!) about the active standby before. And they finally heard me.

Thank you Nokia. Thank You.

Update 1: New positioning settings icon with a map and a wrench. I totally called it last post! :D

Update 2: Hmm, seems WordPress 2.7.1 messed up with K2, sorry if the site looks wonky.

So I hacked my Nokia 5800. I’m not here to tell you how to do it, as there’s a very simple method floating around the int0rw3bs. Just google for “HelloOX 1.02″.

But continuing with the tradition of using this blog just to keep notes for myself, I’ll post about what I did with the hacking.

• Copied my N95′s bookmark database over the 5800′s. (C:\Private\100012a5\DBS_101FD685_BrowserBookmarks.db). This allowed me to remove the default “Download Sounds!” etc folders, plus keep my bookmarks from the N95, as seen above.
• Edited the appshelldata.xml (C:\Private\101F4CD2\Content\), and removed a part that mentioned MySpace, removing the MySpace icon shortcut, good riddance.

The part I removed from the appshelldata.xml follows:

<appshell:url url="http://mas.link.nokia.com/mobib" short_name="MySpace" long_name="MySpace" title_name="MySpace" icon_file="Z:\resource\apps\myspace.mif" icon_id="16384" mask_id="16385"/>

Which is interesting, possibly opening the possibility of having web shortcuts on the main menu. Kinda like the iPhone OS webclips. Some may like it. Update: Here’s the original 5800 appshelldata.xml found on the drive Z:/, some pretty interesting mentions to Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live.

From europe.nokia.com :D

Gotta go get my cable, will report any major differences here soon. (besides what was already covered with the change log that has been floating around for a while)

Update:

• If the theme transitions (aka kastor ui) is on, pop-up menus don’t flash anymore after being opened. (if you experienced it you’ll know what I’m talking about.
• That weird Accessory Setup app is still there, but now it doesn’t ask you to connect an accessory after thinking for a while. On V11 it gives you a quick “restart accessory” error. Progress? Who knows!

Update2:

Did anybody else notice the album artwork is smaller in some songs, not a tag problem since it happens even with the songs that came with the phone. Compare: Before and after.

Ah winter, ice, snow. I tried and tried to take good pictures really showing the bluish tint of my 5800 for my last post, but failed. Turns out it was just a lighting problem, since the blinding white glow of snow was enough to make it show itself to the camera. :D

See the whole collection of pics after the break.

And here’s more of my first impressions (second impressions?)

Update: No, the browser does not suck and it does the job well, most of those are UI improvement suggestions.

• Web
  • Still no fonts, everything is rendered as Nokia Sans and to heck if you want a serif font.
  • Form text input fields (as in forums) don’t recognize the enter key, everything I post is submitted as one long line.
  • Old webkit? My N95 identifies itself as running webkit/413, same with the 5800. Update 2: the webkit trac says s60′s source havent been touched in 17 months, but opensource.nokia.com says it was updated last october, who to believe?
  • Bookmark management is a draaag. It totally needs drag and drop, as in the main menu.
  • Default bookmark folders (Download sounds, etc) still aren’t deletable (as expected, but still :P)
  • Favicon detection still suck. ffs, even google’s?
  • Go to url on the toolbar. I don’t know about you, my I don’t generally use my phone to discover new websites by typing a never visited before url. That middle button would be better used with a shortcut to bookmarks.
  • Options, and the 3 lines toolbar icon, they should be unified (the 3 lines thing with submenus?) Also the 3 lines thing should be transparent.
  • Landscape mode layout is weeeird. They should have at least basic back/forward icons floating over the page. As when you’re seeing a fullscreen picture on the gallery. Make them appear and show up when tapping a screen corner or something.
  • Switching windows, still no option to make a new window/tab, and the switching interface is awful. Screenshot. Every thing on the options submenu and no toolbar icons? Really?
  • I asked for this when I had the N95 and am asking for it again, default zoom/layout on a bookmark basis. For example, some sites work better on landscape, some others with zoom at 120%, I want custom fields when editting a bookmark that allow me to set those things. So when I click them, the browser applies the zoom and layout.
  • Scrollbars please :P Ever tried to scroll to the bottom of a huge page (say, the Nokia Rumors thread at Mobile-Review) with the dragging? It’s one of the worst design decisions on the iPhone, and Nokia did it too. :(
  • Easier way to copy the current url please? Or a way to copy text from the page, not just fields? I can’t copy the url of an imageshack.us upload because of that.
• Internet related
  • You only have the option of setting a default access point for java apps. Not destinations. wtf?
  • No default destinations or access points on wrt widgets. Make it at least inherit the settings from web :P
• Video Center (Centre :P)
  • The gallery used to ignore stuff on the My Videos folder, it doesn’t anymore, mixing my taken pix with my downloaded series episodes.
  • Needs more codecs! We finally have a screen worthy of watching stuff on, but almost no codec support? h.264, pretty please with sugar on top? :P
  • Video Centre can search and watch Youtube videos (!!!) but it’s way buried (make a shortcut to “Search on youtube” on the start pane?) and only searches the mobile versions of the videos (WTF???)
• Misc
  • Needs. More. Drag-and-drop. Seriously.
  • Icon mess, some icons are the new ovi style (flat and colorful), some are the default S60 colors (flat and blue), and some are the former Nseries icons (3d-ish). Consistency please.
  • No more my content in search. (not that I’ve used it)
  • Lack of advanced apps, zip manager? pdf reader? Scientific calculator (s40 has it for years ffs)? Barcode reader?
  • Active standby, etc. I talk too much about it.
  • Landscape mode Nokia Maps please?

Update 1: Ok, now for new things I discovered (and love):

• I have the browser set to auto connect to the web destination, so it is silent when you’re in wifi range, but it asks you for confirmation to use network data! (love it, and you can disable it if you have a data plan)
• The wifi password input for new networks is simple and to the point, I like it.

Woah… This came out longer then I expected. Anyway here’s the pics :P

And my favorite, because god knows why my camera decided to use the flash, and it really shows the bluish tint:

Yes! Finally today I went to the Nokia Flagship store in Chicago to get my very own Nokia 5800! This post is going to be just my first impressions, not meant to be a through review, I’ll leave the nitpicking in specific apps (or lack of) in the next posts.

The good:

• Since the moment I took it out of the box, I was suprised with how small, and how solid the device really is. It’s miles away from my N95, and it lets you know the moment you put your hands on it.
• Box full of accessories! Pouch, stand, 8gb memory card, strap, tv-out cable in a mid-range device.
• +1 Nokia for finally giving me a choice of colors, the Flagship Store had both the red and the blue version of it. I can’t remember the last time I had such a choice. (Perhaps never?)
• Nokia took a page out of the Motorola book and started bundling content with their devices! 29 awesome wallpapers, 8 songs (all different genres, sure you’ll find something you like!) 5 videos (2 music videos, the trailer of The Dark Knight, a promo video of the 5800 and a documentary trailer?
• Talking about content, I really enjoyed some of the tracks that came with the memory card, specially the one that included the music video, Minipop’s Like I Do. (I even caught myself airdrumming to it on the trip back :P)
• +1 for all content being widescreen, great demonstration of the awesomeness that is the screen. And it is awesome, how can something so (relatively) small pack so much pixels! Best screen evar.
• Again on the built in content, all tracks had album artwork. And to think it was just a year ago that my N95 only came with a artwork-less track of Moby’s In My Heart
• That was then I plugged my N95′s microsd, of the 100s of tracks I skipped, the music player detected the album art of all tracks except for one. Huge improvement!
• Battery life ought to be good. I listened to music during all the trip back, and the battery stayed at 2 bars during the whole time. (Using only the charge that comes with it)
• The gap between one track and another while playing is smaller, not truly gapless playback, but close.
• Early reviewers weren’t kidding, this thing is loud.
• And at last the lock switch: it’s so cool. :P

The bad:

• Refreshing your music library still takes foreeeeever.
• Accelerometer powered screen rotation sucks, it was never a good idea, and now I’m forced to use it since there’s no physical way of rotating the screen.
• The games on it are a joke :P
• Oh Nokia, still no option to customize a newly created folder’s icon. :( See how weird my makeshift office folder looks in my menu.
• You can do anything with the touchscreen only, except getting in the menu. Where’s the option to use the standard S60 homescreen with softkeys Nokia? Update 2: You can put a menu shortcut on the active standby bar. Only 4 slots, 6 apps I’d like to put there :P
• Weird stuff that you can uninstall: Welcome, Settings Wizard, Accessory Setup (whatever that is). But most importantly, wtf is with the Myspace shortcut icon?

The other stuff:

• Clever of them to have the screen protective film with those weird markings. If it was clear, nobody would take it off and then they would complain about the screen’s sensivity :P
• And because this sort of thing matters to people, my blue, USA 5800 with the product code 0575384 has these languages.

Now to wait until the transfer of my 7gb playlist is completed. Oh Joy. (at least transfers average in 1200kb/s)

Update 1: Forgot to mention that I’ve been trying all input methods, oddly enough, the full screen keyboard is the one that feels the most awkward to me, alphanumeric and mini qwerty are fine, and the handwriting recognition works surprisingly well! (except for the fact that I never dot my ‘i’s :P)

Oh and click after the break for more pictures :P

This is part 1 of 4, go watch the rest on MobileBurn itself, or click the following links to get the high quality versions: Part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

Now I know that you can still close apps from the task switcher, you only have to tap and hold the icon to get the close option.

Played with a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic on Forum Nokia’s RDA today, gorgeous. I took a couple screenshots of things I’ve found noteworthy, and got a couple sample pics (from the lab’s ceiling, lucky the camera wasn’t facing the desk)

The gallery is here, read on for a couple comments. (And please, don’t hotlink my pics!)

New funky animated graphic with S60′s logo, while it applies a new theme.

You can finally move a folder into another folder (!!!)

Options menu with only one option, why Nokia, why?

Application settings has a LOT of sub menus, important ones even, and needs to be promoted to the Settings app’s top level instead of being under “Phone” Update Jan 11 ’09: They heard me on that :D (not necessarily me, but they did what I said :P)

Take note Nokia!