Webcam pic woo

Who’d have thought? Whoever found my phone on the waiting area I had left it returned it! He/she found it, took it home, took a picture, made a couple calls before returning it to my college’s front desk/lost and found thing, lucky me!

So, to kick the blog posting back on a good note, here’s a couple neat things I found about yesterday and today.

• Disappointed Ovi Maps can’t go on landscape mode on the 5800, for whatever crazy ass “software differentiation” idea the folks at Nokia came up with? Simple, install Maps 3.1 beta then uninstall it, accelerator based screen rotation works now.
• Furtiv (AAS review) is a gateway between Share Online and Twitter/Facebook/Picasa/etc. What that means is that you can now upload a photo from the camera app directly to twitter in just a couple button presses. It’s really convenient! It’s basically PixelPipe done right.

Oh, also, Sky Force Reloaded was recently adapted for S60v5. I played the free demo available on the Ovi Store, and let me tell you something, their use of the touchscreen is the best control method I’ve seen in S60v5 games yet. Screw people trying to be trendy with accelerometer controls, this is how gaming on S60v5 should be.

Maybe I’ll record a video of myself playing the first level and post about it later. So yay, that’s it.

:)

rly

Splitting the updates I was adding in the ActiveFile post to a new one, just to be tidy.

“Oh, by the way, my 5800′s earpiece finally gave up, am taking it to be replaced tomorrow. So back to the N95 for a while. Dunno if that’ll affect the frequency (LOL) of posts here, but just giving a heads up. Hey that was easy, replaced on the spot. And maybe it’s just my impressions, but I swear the new 5800 is a little more… solid, or something.”

Hacking most certainly got easy lately, getting a certificate is totally automated, and with it, installing HelloOX2 is a doddle.

Searching the installers to get my phone set up again, here are the things I noticed:

• There’s no easy way to get the freeware epocware Zip Manager that was available in the Download! app, leaving you with no easily available Zip app. Wtf? I found a repack of it with updated Ovi style icons on Opda though, so it’s all good.
• Getting mobbler I noticed that on the 20th, Nokia released a couple more APIs for S60v5, so scrobbling might be possible on the next version.
• Got a new (at least for me lol) Putty version, with touch support too, which is nice.

And the big news for today is, of course, the official announcement of the N900. I’ve been a loyal Symbian/S60 user for… 4 years already? But… wow.

I can’t understate it, this is huge. The new UI (Panorama desktops, task switcher with live previews), the default applications (Mozilla browser, Conversations), the hardware specs (Cortex A8 + max 1gb of ram), I could go on… Seriously, take a look at that site, watch the videos. So awesome.

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

Notice there's no Bookmarks db

If you scroll down the main page a little, you’ll see I was away from this blog for quite a while, I didn’t even post nothing in May. And so, I wasn’t paying much attention to the comments (sorry guys, just finished replying to them :P). Two comments in my first post about hacking the 5800 were asking how to modify files that are already in use by the system (most databases, font files (when in C: or E:), resource files, etc), I had already said just to “look around”. Well, that’s no good! In this post I’ll make a guide on how.

First, get a file manager that has an option to ask “Are you sure you want to exit?”. I hate UIs that do that, but they’re useful here (lol). My choice would be the manufacturer capabilities enabled ActiveFile (signing/hacking required), the UI is glitchy on 5th edition (supposedly a fix is coming soon), but I prefer ActiveFile over any other manager on 3rd edition. (right now I use Y-Browser for everyday tasks and ActiveFile for stuff like this, on my 5800)

Activate on Settings > General

Now for the part where the magic happens. Ever since 2nd edition (or even first, don’t remember) S60 had this backup function on the memory card app/built-in file browser, it makes a copy of modified files from C:/ to a hidden folder on E:/. It was incredibly useful on 2nd edition for making app backups, it got kinda broken on 3rd because of security (lol), and it’s back in a refreshed form in 5th. But how does it copy files from C: without the OS complaining? That’s right, it lowers (momentarily) the security!

woo

The thing is, this backup function closes every other app open on the phone, and stops the menu from being able to launch apps while the backup is on progress, in order to protect those files. That’s where the “Ask on exit” option comes to play! The backup app can’t close ActiveFile because it can’t answer Yes for the question. (lol)

So switch to ActiveFile using the menu key, answer No to the “Do you want to exit?” and you’re left with an unprotected file system and an open file manager with all files capability. Yay.

Now for a couple tips:

• On the backup contents part, I suggest just selecting Contacts, Calendar and Messages, as selecting all will give you a lot of time to mess with files, but increases the chances of a crash/wrong file to mess up something on your phone.
• Speaking of time, you only have from when it says “Creating backup” to when it says “Backup complete” to modify files. This won’t work while the message reads “Preparing for backup”. Do a backup once and just look at how much time it is.
• If you want to copy something to C:\Private\100012a5, don’t leave the source file in E:\, copy it first so C:\Private, or leave it on the clipboard before starting the backup. Again, for speed reasons.
• Keep in mind that system files are case sensitive, if you’re using this method to copy over the bookmarks files as I showed in that other post, rename the file to have the exact same capitalization. Lol.db isn’t the same as LOL.db.

And there you go, huge wall of text, but I tried to explain every aspect of this trick throughly. If you want a tl;dr version of the post, I’ll add it here:

1. Get ActiveFile 1.42, activate ask on exit.
2. Use the built in file manager to start a backup.
3. While the phone is backuping, switch back to ActiveFile. All files are fair game to copy/delete.

Update: The new ActiveFile V1.43RC1 quits on backuping, breaking this method. Keep a V1.42 sis around to do this.

Yay! :D (hacked phone needed, for a summary in how to do it, scroll to the bottom of the post :P)

After a lot (a lot!) of trial and error, I finally figured out a way to get a Games folder with the proper icon on the 5800′s menu. It was a battle of googling, extracting then compressing files, messing with .svgs that do not open in computers and more.

It all started with Flahorn’s latest theme. Flahorn, being the awesome guy he is, created an icon set that follows the Ovi icons styling for use on S60v3 themes, and it included the Games icon. I installed it to see how it would look on my 5800, and editing the skin_id (I visited this before, wow that post is outdated!) for a folder that I created to a s60v3′s games folder id, the icon appeared.

But I didn’t want to use a theme to see the pretty icon, and if OPDA’s menueditor could change the icon, there should be a way! Using SisXplorer from Symbian Toys, I got to the .mif file inside the theme, and the packed .svgs. Of course the svgs are compressed (or maybe that’s just how SVG tiny works), so trying to view them in my computer didn’t work. I unpacked and sent all the 1000+ svgs to my phone, and it could open them!

I found the Games icon .svg there (try transfering it to your phone if you want to view it), but I can’t link appshelldata.xml to a .svg, only to .mifs. Found a Forum Nokia page explaining how to pack a .svg to a .mif.

But that wasn’t the end of it, to properly point the menu app to the right icon, you have to know the icon_id to fill in the appshelldata.xml. I tried lots of values, but no one worked. Finally, after a couple different searches, I learned that the first svg always has the icon_id set to 16384 (random value much?) in a Forum Nokia thread.

With that, I had my icon packed in a .mif, and all the values I needed. So my appshelldata.xml looked like this:

<appshell:folder positioned=”1″ title_name=”Games” long_name=”Games” short_name=”Games” applicationgroup_name=”games” icon_file=”C:\System\Games.mif” icon_id=”16384″ mask_id=”16385″ icon_skin_major_id=”101F86E3″ icon_skin_minor_id=”1977″/>

I threw the .mif in C:/System, and set the skin_ids to the games folder value so that they’ll change with themes. Uploaded the appshelldata, and it worked!

So, in conclusion, get this .mif, transfer it to somewhere safe on your phone, and edit your appshelldata.xml (found in C:\Private\101F4CD2\Content\). Copy and paste the block quote above to .xml, right after a “</appshell:folder>”, just changing the path to the .mif, reboot (or kill the Menu app) and presto! There’s your folder!

Yay another 400~ post about folders~

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.

Just put this .txt (Save as) in C:\private\10202be9\ and reboot. It works!

From Nokioteca, via Daily Mobile

As usual, this one’s for hacked phones only. I thought I had made a post about this earlier but no. Better, since now this post can be updated with phones that come with Share Online on the rom (e.g. v30 N95)

Let’s start with identifying what puts that in the standby. The culprit is a file called SoActiveIdle.dll. It stays at !:/sys/bin/

So if your phone didn’t came with SO3.0, it is mearly a case of hacking your phone, disabling caps, and deleting that file.

But when that file is in the rom (Z:/), it gets trickier. UPDATE: You have to make the OS look for the file in drive C:/, and to do that you have to install a Share Online Upgrade from europe.nokia.com/A4388352 (The one it comes with is 3.0.08(13) and this one is 3.0.08(23). After that you can modify the SoActiveIdle.dll.

You can’t just erase it, as then the OS will load the Z: version, you have to corrupt it. I did this by opening the .dll in notepad, changing a few characters in the file, and then copying it back to C:/sys/bin. Rebooted and the shortcut was gone!

So long story short, you can just install a Share Online upgrade, download my modified dll, throw it on C:/sys/bin, reboot and enjoy the clean active standby!

Thanks Ben for noticing I had missed something :P

UPDATE 2: Or you could just do this. Which removes share online AND search, god bless Symbian-Freak :P (found here)

The internets are buzzing with themes that use this new pack of icons made by Flahorn, ICEman made one, p@sco made one, Flahorn himself made one, but they all require a certain appshelldata.xml (the file that saves your menu order) and menu.mif (the file with the icon graphics). I uploaded them here. Included in this file in is my personal xml, the one you see on the screenshot, because the included one does not change the folders name together with the phone language.

I was posting in mobile-review about my experiences, for now I’ll just copy the post, if I get something conclusive I’ll update it.

“I thought just using Menu Editor I could get them. But alright, I got the .mif and .xml and will try pronto!

edit: yup, I got it!

edit2: aha, it messes with the folders name (no more changing name according to language), I’ll have to edit the xml myself. Like the real name for the music folder isn’t music, it’s &qtn_apps_musicfolder;, and the OS replaces it with a name according to the language.

edit3: yep, I got a modded icon Games folder, that becomes Jeux if I change the phone to french, now I just need to find the real names of the GPS and etc folder

edit4: ok, better post my research/etc here:

<appshell:folder title_name=”&qtn_apps_gamesfolder_title;”
long_name=”&qtn_apps_gamesfolder_list;”
short_name=”&qtn_apps_gamesfolder;”
applicationgroup_name=”games”
icon_file=”C:\resource\apps\Menu.mif”
icon_id=”16388″ mask_id=”16389″
icon_skin_major_id=”101F86E3″
icon_skin_minor_id=”1977″>

is the code for a well named, iconized game folder, not available on the N95.

And if someone who is reading this has a hacked E90, I’d LOVE to get a copy of your appshelldata.xml (found in C:\Private\101F4CD2\Content\) because it might have the real name for the help and GPS folders (the other two I’m searching).

edit5: woo stream of thought post
now my factory themes don’t show the GPS icons, while ICEman’s and P@sco’s do. Guess I’ll have to keep 2 xml files depending on the theme I’m using. Or maybe it’s just because standard themes weren’t expecting the GPS icon? Sometimes I just hope restarting will fix things :P”

edit6: I think the original themes tell the phone explicitly to use the Z:/resources/apps/menu.mif file, that’s why they aren’t showing. And if you remove the “icon_skin_major_id=”101F86E3″ icon_skin_minor_id=”1977″” from the xml, the icons will stop obeying to the theme, and use the C:/resources/apps/ mif. But as as they don’t listen to the theme anymore, they don’t change icons with the themes, leading to the screenshot a couple posts above.

Although I was experimenting with the xml I got together with the mif, sometimes the Games folder would keep it’s icon. Unfortunately I can’t reproduce the situation. Also, it seems that the N95 .mif has the Extras folder icon (the stars one) unused.”
So my solution for now it keep switching between XMLs, using the ones linked to the theme for Flahorn icons, and the ones unlinked to the default themes. And of course, the final solution would be include the complete mif in drive Z, but that won’t happen.

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.