e-ignite: Tech

A while back, I was looking into a number of different email solutions on my Nokia E71. The built in client simply isn’t powerful enough for my needs, so I investigated Nokia Messaging, Nokia Mail For Exchange, RoadSync, ProfiMail and the Gmail Java app.  Here’s how they stacked up:

First and foremost, I’m using Google Apps (aka Gmail for your domain) which integrates all the Google applications such as Mail, Calendar, Wave etc with your own domain.  This means that the Gmail Java app works with it directly, but it also offers push mail (via Microsoft Exchange) and POP/IMAP.

First: The Gmail Java App (Free)

The Gmail Java App is actually very good, but also very basic. This doesn’t offer Push mail of any kind – it automatically polls your email approximately every ten minutes and vibrates the phone if a message is received. The vibration is quite easy to miss, however, and there’s no audio or screen-based alert. There is also virtually no support for attachments – the app allows you read only access to certain images, and will display plain text from some attachments such as Microsoft Word documents.

I found the Gmail app to be useful especially when roaming abroad because it uses minimal data and allows you to choose what emails you want to read and downloads them on request rather than automatically.  The downside is that I found the formatting of outgoing messages a bit strange since line breaks are added at strange places, meaning it looks strange when you view the email on your computer. It sends and displays email in plain text only, there’s absolutely no html support. The upside is that it works fast and gives you full access to all your Gmail labels and contacts.

In summary, a good basic mail app with certain applications. Better than the built in E71 mail app but only if you use Gmail.

Next: Gmail Push with Nokia Mail For Exchange (MfE) (Free)

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A screenshot of the Here and Now weather forecast

I was browsing the Nokia Beta Labs site today and found an excellent little weather application called Here and Now. Here and Now uses your E71′s GPS to determine your current location, then gives you an overview of the forecast weather for that location. It’s surprisingly handy, especially if you’re on the go, and saves a lot of time browsing the web on the E71′s browser and trying to decide what the nearest town is for a forecast!

Here and Now also offers news on any public events for the area you are in – this is handy if you’re holidaying in a place and looking for ideas of things to see and do, but the accuracy can be a bit off (ie. a number of events are not listed) and this part is really just a novelty. As far as I’m concerned, this app is all about the weather forecast which I genuinely find useful.

Here and Now is available from http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/here-and-now or as a direct download link to your E71 via the following barcode:

* To use the above barcode on your Nokia E71, hit MENU > TOOLS > BARCODE > SCAN CODE then hold the camera up to the barcode. You’ll be given the direct link to the .SIS installer file, and all you have to do is select “open link” to start downloading.

There have been many times I’ve sat at my computer wondering how to do such-and-such on Fedora Linux and haven’t been able to find a straight answer through all of my efforts on Google. I recently came across the Fedora Guide which has an excellent page of “how to” questions and answers. The Fedora Guide keeps it simple – for example, “How To Install Google Desktop” simply shows you the command you need to enter in Terminal (for Google Desktop, all you need to do is enter su -c ‘yum –enablerepo=google install google-desktop-linux’)

I found a number of entries I found useful, and even managed to enable several things I didn’t realise I missed from Windows, such as backspace to go “back” in Firefox. A few of my favourite tweaks are listed below:

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Free upgrade to Quickoffice 6 on the Nokia E71

Nice surprises don’t come along too often, but as a Nokia E71 owner (or an owner of any Nokia E series device for that matter), you can now get a free upgrade to Quickoffice 6. This update adds support for MS Office 2007 documents along with other general performance increases.

To get your free upgrade is very simple – open Quickoffice (usually via MENU > OFFICE > QUICKOFFICE), select UPDATES & UPGRADES from the Quickoffice menu and then select “Quickoffice 6 – free for Nokia Eseries). The application will download to your handset and install – all you’re asked to provide is an email address to register.

I found the upgrade very simple and had no problems at all. If you don’t have a data plan on your mobile phone contract, you should be aware that the download is over 1Mb in size, so Wi-Fi may be the best option to download it.

PS: I found the original story here and thought I’d pass it on!

I’m not sure if it was just me that had this problem with Fedora 11, but after I upgraded from Fedora 10 the first thing I thought about the desktop experience was that the screen resolution looked quite low. On checking the settings via SYSTEM > PREFERENCES > DISPLAY, the resolution was up at maximum. It took me a while to see the problem, but it was the text size in the menus and on the icons that seemed huge.

Fortunately, this is an easy fix, and it makes Fedora look much better than the default setting:

"Low Resolution" default

"High Resolution" look with smaller font size

Simply go to SYSTEM > PREFERENCES > APPEARANCE and select the FONTS tab. From here you can choose the font face and, critically, the font size. I’d recommend that you drop this from the default 10pt to something nearer 7pt or 8pt. I use a Dell XPS M1210 laptop with Fedora 11 and it has a 12.1″ screen and a maximum display resolution of 1280 x 800.I think that 7pt looks pretty good.

A question that’s asked very often – “How do you enable mp3 playback on Fedora 11?”

Easy.  Just open a terminal window and enter the following:

su -c ‘rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm’

Next, simply enter the following into the Terminal window:

yum install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly

Once you’ve done this, Fedora will download and install all the necessary software to allow you to listen to mp3s. You may need to enter the root password to perform this installation.

If you’re not running the latest version of Fedora (for example, you’re running and Alpha or Beta version of a not-yet-released distribution), you’ll need to enter a different string.  Check out http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration/ to find the correct code to install repositories for your particular build.

There’s an excellent free messaging app available for the Nokia E71 called Free iSMS. This gives you proper conversation-based viewing of SMS messages on the E71 in a style similar to the iPhone SMS system. You can see at a glance the messages sent and received, and the conversations are grouped by contact (ie. who you’re speaking to), so it’s easy to keep track even if you’re having numerous conversations at the same time. Free iSMS also has some great features , the most important of which is that it replaces the New Message Alert with a pop-up showing the name of who sent you the message. This is an excellent feature and one that I really miss when using the default Nokia message alerts.

I originally found the link to Free iSMS via the E71 Blog when it was at version 1.01. It has now been updated to 1.03, and this fixes the stability and a few general issues with the software. I’ve been extremely impressed with how the new version works and I couldn’t be without this great app.

You can download Free iSMS 1.03 from Nokia Addict but please be aware that this app is unsigned.  This means that you have to sign it before you’ll be able to install it on your E71 – don’t worry though, this is an easy process and it doesn’t involve any hacking of the E71.  A full and excellent tutorial showing you how to self-sign apps is available here.

Bsically, you will need to register with a website and request a certificate – unfortunately for the impatient amongst you (and I’m including myself in that category!), it takes around 24 hours for you to get the signing certificate. You then need to install a free program, download your signing certificate, link them up and point them at the unsigned Free iSMS .sisx installer file and click “SignSis” – it really is as simple as that.  The signing certificate can be used as many times as you want, so you’ll be able to sign other applications or new versions of Free iSMS as they’re released.

Any problems or issues? Drop a comment below and I’ll try to help out.

There has been much reporting of the new E71 Firmware update version 300.21.012 which became available to download in certain parts of the world (Europe, I believe) for a select few handset types. Despite numerous reports of problems with the Firmware upgrade, the big rumour seems to have come from the E71 Fanatics forum, where a post seems to suggest that the firmware update comes with greatly improved images from the camera. Due to the different angles, subjects and lighting conditions in the two photographs, there has been much speculation over the actual comparability of the images, so I decided to upgrade my phone in the name of science and report back on the findings!

The before shot

I took the following image before updating my E71 firmware, so this used the 210.21.006 release. I tried to be helpful and put out a watch, cigar case and an empty Diet Coke bottle on my mouse mat to give an idea of detail, and before I took the image, I hit “T” to focus on the silver band of the bottle. Here are the results:

Image taken before the firmware upgrade - click for full, un-edited resolution

As you can see, there is a fair amount of blurring and a lack of detail – a lot of noise is present, especially on the wall and door in the background. If you zoom in, the watch face is not easily read.

The After Shot

I upgraded the firmware (which involved installing an updated version of Nokia Software Updater, backing up my device in Nokia PC Suite, downloading the 108.4Mb Firmware file, installing it then restoring my data) which took around an hour all-in (see the watch face), and then took another photo of the same “scene”. The results are shown below:

Image taken after the upgrade to 300.21.012 firmware. Click for full-resolution, un-edited image.

While the angle of the shot isn’t exactly the same, the camera was again focused on the silver label of the Diet Coke bottle using the “T” shortcut. If you zoom in, it’s clear that there is less noise in the background and the image appears to be much sharper. You can read the text on the cigar tube and the watch face is far clearer when you zoom in compared to the previous image. The lighting is exactly the same as in the previous image too – a desk lamp (giving off a slightly orange-tinted light) is on the desk above, and natural light is coming in a window opposite the desk. On the basis of these photos, I’d say that the imaging from the camera is slightly improved, but it doesn’t show anywhere near such a strong improvement as in the cans of Coke in this test. I’ll put a disclaimer up and say that there may be camera shake etc involved in the above since I didn’t use a tripod, so it’s up to you as to how many pinches of salt you take with this test. But I’m going to say that I’m pleased with the resulting apparent quality increase.

General update issues

Generally, the update has been a positive experience for me. I’ve noted that another bug has been fixed (you can now mute an alarm when the phone is off and the snooze will actually work) and the image quality increase is a bonus. It would also appear to be worthwhile for the security and stability fixes for the web browser and the phone software generally. I didn’t have any problems with the GPS, language or other settings.

However (and this is always the case with an E71 Firmware Upgrade), all the data was lost on my phone. No biggie, I backed it up with PC Suite before I started, but I did have to reinstall a load of my applications including Nokia Messaging, Psiloc World Traveler, Birdstep SmartConnect and Free iSMS to name only a few. It’s something I was expecting to have to do, but it’s a major problem if you don’t have access to the original install files. Before you go ahead with the update, make sure you have copies of everything that you consider to be critical to your use of the E71 (for me, this is SmartConnect and Free iSMS).

I like to keep my phone as up-to-date as possible, but if you’re nervous about performing the update yourself, always remember that Nokia will update your software for you free of charge if your phone is under warranty – just take it to your local care centre and have a chat with them about it.

As you may have noticed from one of my other posts, I’m a big fan of the themes released by tehkSeven for Nokia S60 devices. tehkSeven has released a new premium theme for the E71 (and other S60 handsets) called Fissure. I saw it, I loved it and I got it:

The Fissure premium theme on a Nokia E71

This theme is great – it has transparencies on the selection boxes and dialogue boxes, and it really feels like a truly “complete” theme. The icon package used is great, and I can’t find fault with it. Full details and several more screenshots are available here.

The difference between the Fissure theme and the other tehkSeven themes I’ve highlighted is that Fissure is a premium theme, so it’s not free. It is, however, a total bargain at only 2 euros (£1.75 GBP when I bought it and this includes the extortionate PayPal foreign currency fees!) I can’t recommend it enough, and I’m sure that like me, you’ll not grudge the small amount of money for such a great theme.

I fully believe in supporting developers like tehkSeven who spend a great amount of time to make themes for people like me who don’t have the artistic talent, knowledge or time to do it ourselves. He’s given away a number of great themes for free, so I have no problem in paying for one every now and again. Can you believe that on his announcement thread for Fissure, someone posted saying that he was going to buy the theme and then distribute it for free so tehk didn’t make any money from it!?!?

Go on people. Show your support.

The Nokia Photo Browser App

One of the big drawbacks of the Nokia E71 is its poor ability to handle lots of photos. When I first got the phone, I transferred around a thousand photos from old phones etc – it became quickly clear that it was very difficult (and pretty slow) to browse and find photos that were taken some time ago. Luckily, Nokia Beta Labs has come up with a Photo Browser application.

The Photo Browser allows you to preview, and quickly flick through thumbnails of your photos, and allows you to open them up full-screen to show them to friends. All you have to do is install the Photo Browser application on your phone, launch it (you’ll need to give it a few minutes to index all of your photos the first time you run it) and you’re free to browse your images easily and quickly.

Full information and the download can be found at Nokia Beta Labs. You may also notice an excellent little link on Nokia’s Photo Browser page – “barcode link to this page”.  If you select this, you’ll be given the image of a barcode on your screen – on your E71, go to MENU > TOOLS > BARCODE READER and select SCAN CODE. Show the barcode to your camera and it’ll give you the direct link to the download page on your phone – this is great and saves you spending time typing in a long link.

For some, this may seem like old news since the Photo Browser was actually released back in March. However, what you may not know is that Nokia are constantly updating their products in the Beta Labs, so the Photo Browser software was last updated on 15 June 2009 (at time of writing), so make sure you’re running the latest and best version of this great utility.