e-ignite: Tech

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.