Let’s Help Nick!
I received a rather urgent message from a reader - Nick, who is having trouble setting up his boss' Nokia E61. Nick is short of time and his tail is on the line for this one…
Nick writes:
"I just upgraded my boss to a E61 from a Treo 650. My problem is this - whenever I try to get one of the special blue characters on a key, eg. the @ symbol - the character doesn't show up after I press theblue key and the key itself.For instance,Blue key + "a" should be a quote marks. Instead, I get the yen sign.Blue key + "." should be a hyphen or underscore; instead I get nothing. Blue key + "s" should be an "@" sign; instead I get a dollar sign."Can you please help me out on this, or post something about this? I really need help - my boss is leaving soon and my tail is on the line."
I have very little experience regarding the various keyboard layouts and language versions that exist. I thought I should throw this one out there for all readers with far more expertise than I have to chime in with their suggestions and ideas. Nick's boss' Nokia E61 was purchased from Hi-Mobile.net.
Let me start off with the basics. The first thing I would do is to see what languages your device support. Look under Phone Settings and see what options you have. Can you switch to a different language that better corresponds to the keyboard layout?
Everyone - let's all help Nick. Remember, his neck is on the line.
August 1st, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Sounds like Nick got a reflashed device. The keyboard layout is part of the firmware, and the person flashing it probably used the wrong firmware.
The problem is, currently only official Nokia support stores can flash devices, and for recent devices like the E61 it’s going to be more difficult. Nokia is working on end-user-installable firmware, but it’s going to be a couple months before that shows up in devices.
Great site by the way!
August 1st, 2006 at 10:03 pm
This is going to take a bit of time since it involves downloading the firmware and flashing the firmware of the phone. If you take a look at iein’s post at http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=935556&page=2&pp=15, you will see that instructions are provided on how to flash the firmware. I had a friend who received her unit from China and the keyboard was the same as mine but the actual language variants were different. Her unit has chinese language and I had Espanol, which is the correct one. Several things to keep in mind:
1.) the firmware files are on rapidshare (dot) de and therefore take a bit of time to download, unless you have an account
2.) Some of the flashing software, such as Diego or Phoenix, will conflict with Nokia’s PC Suite and therefore should be uninstalled before installing the flashing software.
3.) Take your time and read everything carefully. After you have read the iinstructions, take a break and read them again. Print them out and refer to them if you need to.
4.) During the flashing process, the SIM card should not be in the phone. However, I had an issue where the flashing software tried to power cycle the phone and it did not take. Under these circumstances, I actually used a inactive SIM in the phone and that took care of the problem. An active SIM should work as well but I am not sure if any problems are associated with it.
5.) Ask around on the board to find out what variants other people with the same keyboard have. This may not be determinable unless the phone is connected to Phoenix but having my own e61 helped me out tremendously when fixing my friend’s e61. It is my understanding that he should be looking out for changing the variants and not the actual language file.
If there is anything I can add to this, Nick can feel free to e-mail me at vickao (at) gmail (dot) com.
August 1st, 2006 at 10:25 pm
HI Nick, there seems to be nothing wrong with the keyboard or the flash version, as per my device the Blue button +A is the yen And The blue Button + s is the Dollar. That is the way it is supposed to be if u r using it in english. If u want the @ sign its down by the Space bar or the left of it. The ” sign is the blue Key + W
August 1st, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Sorry dude i just checked out the picture of the E61 on the home page of this sight and the keys r marked differently to mine. what u are getting is the layout for possibly the european region but have been flashed with software for asian region like where im from.
August 1st, 2006 at 10:55 pm
The Firmware on your phone is meant for an E61 with this keyboard layout:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/e-series/175194502/
But the phone you have has this keyboard layout:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oryl/173424586/
The only thing you can do to fix this is to re-flash the phone with the right firmware.
August 1st, 2006 at 11:03 pm
wait.. here is the exact keyboard your firmware seems to be for:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmealins/163784980/
August 1st, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Print a the picture I posted above and give it to your boss to carry around in his pocket.
August 2nd, 2006 at 12:19 am
Though not exactly the same, a slightly related problem. I have changed the phone and writing language to english, but when I access my office webmail through the browser, the links and labels on the page (which uses outlook web access) still appear in chinese.
The weird part though is that after changing the phone language 2-3 links did appear in english with the rest in chinese.
Also while using the native mail client, any attachments sent, don’t seem to be accessible as they just appear as a ‘winmail.dat’ file. This results in my having to open the mail through the browser and download the attachment and hence, repeatedly navigating through the chinese screen.
Regards,
Ashwin
August 2nd, 2006 at 12:45 am
Try using the right bottom key “Car” and you will see all the symbols displayed, just scroll to one of them and select by pressing the joy stick. That seems the easiest to me as I also have this problem of symbol keys at the wrong places.
Ee
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:48 am
Best thing to do is what Victor says. Reflash it to the correct version. Looks like you have an Asian branded version. Always buy from your own country! There are lots of other Languages other then English! Don’t worry to much about the flashing… i did my n70 - worked fine. Best of luck!
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:39 am
I’ve only experienced this problem with pre-production models that got flashed incorrectly.
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:25 am
are there different models of e61? i found one online shop selling two different prices for nokia e61.
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:47 am
Thank you all for contributing!
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:46 am
I got my device from phonesource-usa.com and it has the dedicated @ key next to the space bar….which version is this??
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:57 am
Hi Nick,
I hope that especially your boss understands that it is the fault of the procurement office or himself for buying the wrong version of the E61. The character key seems to me the easiest way to go for now!
I had a kind off related problem with the phone lock code…i included some symbols as well in the code. When it was prompted the first time when the phone had been offline i got a bit of a scare! Because when u submit a code it will display the character at first for u to check if u pressed the right key (very handy). But when i pressed the symbol it did not appear in the screen at all!! not as ‘*’ either. So i at first assumed that it had not been entered in the phone as well. I started surfing around a bit and also consulted the club nokia careline, they don’t know anything!!
After a few minutes i thought owh well, i’ll just try it and kept on entering the rest of my code, and wouldn’t u know it! It just accepted the code!
So to recap: when my code would be 12$34 it appears in my screen as ****
In conlusion Nokia does have some problems when it comes to characters
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:20 am
The thing that sux is that…. where he hell is the dollar sign on my keyboard???
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oryl/173424586/
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:24 am
Hi Nick,
Besides flashing your boss’s device to the correct firmware version. In the meantime, you can also buy yourself solution as well.
You can buy, from any Nokia shop, the Bluetooth keyboard for Nokia E61. This is pretty useful, and your boss might be even more impressed while you are figuring out how to flash your boss’s phone to the currect firmware version.
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Bartimus - wonder what market your Nokia was intended for?
on my keyboard it’s a=£ s=$ and the d key is for the euro symbol.
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:22 pm
well… on the right side of the space bar there is an N with a squigly above it.. thats a spanish character. But there is also an upside down question mark.. so i dunno. I say spanish or swedish or something.
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Just discussed it with my sister and she, a spanish speaking person :P, tells me that the N (with squigly) the updiside down “!” and “?” are all used in the spanish alphabet. There is also a french “C” with a hook under it that she and I can only relate to the french alphabet, however there are no other french characters on the board like the “e” with the line above it going one way or the other.
It seems like I have a spanish, or just regular North American keyboard.
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Bartimus, we both have the same kb layout. It is Spanish. The Ñ is the spanish sound for “gn’. The key is using the tools incorporated into Symbian itself, the “character” key. When in any text field (email, im, text message, etc.) pressing the “character” key brings the symbols to the screen. Our “$” is there. Though a small inconvenience in our language, I’ve found it to be a good exercise for those communicationg in more than one. Repetition by practice brings dexterity. Just my thoughts…
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:30 pm
“Communicationg” being an….er…hmm…international way of saying communicating!
August 2nd, 2006 at 10:26 pm
like what victor said above, the link was what helped me to flash my phoen correctly to a language setting that i need. i also posted a couple of entries on that SAME link, right around page 4, if anyone has any questions you can also contact me. epanda928@hotmail.com
my phone was purchased in NY, hence eng/spanish keyboard. i needed traditional chinese support… i’ve tried out about 4,5 different variants and i finally got what i want.
it’s really not that hard of a process, just very tedious, since you can only flash once before the program stops working, unless you uninstall and redo the whole process again….. >
September 30th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Ahhh, well it’s George Bush’s fault.