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)

The Gmail Push service operates using the Microsoft Exchange protocol and this requires an Exchange-capable client – this is where Nokia MfE comes in. You can configure MfE to connect at certain times so that your email is only pushed to your device when needed, and you can also set it to sync your calendar and contacts with a Gmail or Google Apps account.

In terms of email push, I found this to be reasonably reliable – there was the odd time where email was not pushed out to my E71 immediately, but it usually got there in the end. This had the benefit of giving you free push email integrated into the phone’s OS, but the major dis-benefit was that you had to use the E71′s built-in mail application. This didn’t display html emails, but gave you all the html code with it. Long emails were occasionally truncated and it was not a straightforward process to go online and check your email, then come offline again. While it was useful for the push email, I found the poor user interface (the fault of the Nokia E71 software, not MfE) to be a major disadvantage.

RoadSync ($49.99 / £8.00 GBP from the Ovi Store directly)

After the issues I experienced with the MfE / Nokia E71 email software, I found RoadSync which offered a completely new user interface for email and boasted good integration with Gmail and Google Apps, and most importantly it supports html email. It was basically a direct replacement for MfE, offering the ability to sync your email, contacts and calendar but with a better user interface.

I installed it and configured it for my handset and I made a bit of an error – I told it to do a full new sync of my calendar which deleted the existing entries (as expected) then tried to re-sync all the data from my Google Calendar. Unfortunately, it only seemed to pick up the recurring events in my calendar, didn’t sync past events and left me having to restore all my calendar data from a backup. Not the best start.

After that, things seemed to be ok – the html email was a massive improvement on the built in E71 email system, but I found that the email just stopped being pushed to the phone. Over several days I tested the software and found that around 2-3 out of every 10 emails were actually pushed to my phone, and the others didn’t arrive unless I manually synced. I tried adjusting the settings but found no solution to the problem. I was quite disappointed because RoadSync was an app I really liked and would have spent the money on it (it’s much cheaper on the Ovi store than it is direct from dataviz.com) but in my experience, it was nowhere near as reliable as MfE and the calendar and email sync didn’t “just work” as it should. I therefore can’t recommend RoadSync.

Nokia Messaging (Currently Free – will charge in future)

Nokia Messaging allows you to configure up to ten email accounts which are checked by the Nokia Server and are then pushed out to your phone. The Nokia servers connect via IMAP Idle, meaning that they check your mail accounts every 15 minutes and any email received in between checks should be received by the Nokia servers immediately.

Fundamentally, I didn’t like this arrangement – this means that you need to turn over your email account password to Nokia to enable them to access your email account. As described by another blogger, this seems like one big man-in-the-middle attack. However, I tested the service.

While the email was regularly checked by the Nokia server, I found that push times could vary – often, email was pushed out immediately and the software on the phone was quite slick and integrated well with the homescreen. I didn’t like that the homescreen integration showed the subjects of the latest three emails in your inbox – I’d rather just have had a simple unread mail count. Nokia Messaging also supports full html emails. Other than that, the software was very polished and felt “premium” although the bottom line in a compose window always hung half off the bottom of the screen when I was typing a long email, making it difficult to read exactly what I had typed. Which was irritating.

Despite the occasional service glitch (and slow to receive email), I found Nokia Email worked well. The fact that it is currently free “on a trial basis” is a worry, and as I said, I was not comfortable with handing out my password to Nokia so I felt that this wasn’t the correct email solution for me.

ProfiMail ($27.99)

ProfiMail is a POP/IMAP client for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices that offers IMAP Idle functionality. This means that while it isn’t strictly “push” email, it only connects to the mail server at regular intervals, and any email received between these times is “pushed” out to your phone as required. It is highly configurable to do what you need it to, and it integrates its address book with the phone, giving you access to any email addresses you have stored. ProfiMail also flashes the LED and displays an on-screen notification when new email is received.

For my usage, I’ve found it very easy to launch and check email at individual times where necessary, and it’s also possible to leave the program running in the background for as long as you like, either checking at regular intervals, or running in “push” mode (IMAP Idle – I know it’s not true push, but it works). ProfiMail also has a number of visual styles and colours to choose from, and I’ve had absolutely no problems getting it to work. It supports full html email and attachment support including Word documents etc. Admittedly, it is a little expensive at $27.99, but it’s available at handago.com which often runs discount promotions – either sign up for their email newsletter or search for a discount code online and you could quite easily save around 25% of this cost.

Summary

In summary, if you need push email but don’t want to pay for it and you are a light user, Gmail / Google Apps push with Nokia Mail For Exchange is actually a good enough solution. The interface is clunky, and if you’re a heavy user, I have no doubt that this won’t be good enough however.

Nokia Messaging is a good solution, but security concerns would certainly rule this out for corporate use.

The Gmail Java App is very good and I would recommend it. Again, this should be more suited to the light user, or if you simply use your mobile to read email rather than to compose long replies.

In my opinion, the hands-down winner of this test is ProfiMail. It is highly configurable, supports IMAP Idle, and is well suited to the heavy email user. I agree that it is expensive, but it is also worth the extra.

Note: Any push email system requires your phone to be constantly connected to your data network. This means that you could run up increased data charges, and will absolutely result in a reduction in the battery life of your device.

Did you find this helpful? Can you suggest any other email solutions for your E71 or other Symbian device? Please feel free to use the comments section below.

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.

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:

Setting the backspace button to go to a previous page
Open Firefox and enter about:config into the address bar
In the Filter field, enter browser.backspace_action and change the value to 0 (the number zero)

Improving your bandwidth
Open Terminal and enter the following commands:
su -c ‘cp /etc/sysctl.conf /etc/sysctl.conf.backup’
su -c ‘gedit /etc/sysctl.conf’

Add the following lines to sysctl.conf:
## increase TCP max buffer size setable using setsockopt()
net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
## increase Linux autotuning TCP buffer limits
## min, default, and max number of bytes to use
## set max to at least 4MB, or higher if you use very high BDP paths
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 65536 16777216
## don’t cache ssthresh from previous connection
net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_moderate_rcvbuf = 1
## recommended to increase this for 1000 BT or higher
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 2500
## for 10 GigE, use this, uncomment below
## net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 30000
## Turn off timestamps if you’re on a gigabit or very busy network
## Having it off is one less thing the IP stack needs to work on
## net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0
## disable tcp selective acknowledgements.
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0
##enable window scaling
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1

Save and close the file, then run the following command in Terminal:
su -c ‘/sbin/sysctl -p’

Deleting files securely
To “shred” a file (overwrite it several times to prevent it being recovered), open Terminal and brose to the folder that contains the file you want to shred (for example, if it is on the Desktop enter cd /home/<user>/Desktop) and then enter the following command:
shred -z -u yourfile (where “yourfile” is the file you want to destroy, for example “secret.doc”)

These are just a few of the commands that I found useful, but why not head over to the Fedora Guide and see what other tips and tricks you can find.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.