Eseries

Many readers have asked me what application I use to take the screenshots of my Nokia E61. Since this tool - "Screenshot for Symbian OS" is such an *essential* part of E-Series I am embarrassed that I haven't written about it sooner.

Screenshot for Symbian OS was actually the first application I downloaded to my Nokia E61. It was one of the first applications available for S60 3rd edition and the very first I came across. The application is one of those very rare applications that manage to combine reliability, getting the job done with a clean and amazingly simple user interface. What is even more amazing is that it is free. The multitalented developer - Antony Pranata - is giving this application away.

Antony, my appreciation is much overdue. Thank you!

I am a messaging/communication junkie.  If I am not talking on the phone I am constantly checking and sending email. I am currently using BlackBerry Connect but more about that in a later post. but I also use SMS and IM quite a lot.

If you buy your Nokia E61 (or any other E-series devices) directly from the carrier you will most likely get the device preloaded with the necessary settings to use the native IM applications that comes with the device. However, if you like me, didn't get your Nokia E61 from the carrier you don't have the necessary settings to use the proloaded IM application.

Luckily, there are plenty of IM software alternatives to use instead. One is Agile Messenger from Agile Mobile. They recently announced a free pre-release version of Agile Mobile for the E-series.

Agile Mobile has been around for years and their product Agile Mobile gives you much of the same feature and functionality you would expect from a multi-IM application on the PC. It lets you simultaneously connect to ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN and Google Talk. The application keeps a separate tab for each conversation, supports the use of emoticons, conversation history and lets you edit your contacts from the device. In short. it is a solid IM application with a loyal following. 

It is important to take note that this is a "pre-release" version (read: alpha or beta). There are quite a few anomalies with the software on the E61 but as I said - it's just a pre-release version.

The oddities are more in the areas of UI/cosmetics than functionality so it is still quite useful. One peculiarity is that the two soft buttons on the screen are not mapped correctly to the device buttons as you can see from picture below. Here is a hint - the left selection key is "connect". Press the right selection key and the application will exit.

Another IM application for the Nokia E61 is IM+ by Shape Services. They have a comparable feature set to Agile Mobile and have a five day trial of the application wich includes support for the E-series devices. There are also a number of dedicated Java IM applications that works fairly well on the Nokia E61. One of them is the application by the name of - Mig33!

I have purposely  left this post "open ended" and probably also left out many other good IM applications. But here is where you, the reader comes in. Share with us your "favourite" IM application.

Two readers were kind enough to point out alternative solutions to the problem of the "untrusted certificate" warning when connecting to Gmail, as described below.

Thomas Mango at Trikenit pointed out this solution by Kevin Henrikson. Rafe from the indispensable site All About Symbian suggested a similar solution which I outlined below.

Go to the following URL from the browser of your Nokia E61 (remove the space between "certificates/ certificates" I added that for cosmetic reasons to the blog) https://www.geotrust.com/resources/root_certificates/ certificates/Equifax_Secure_Certificate_Authority_DER.cer or send the URL to yourself in an SMS and access it through the browser.

When you do this you will get an "untrusted certificate" warning but just continue. Save the certificate, you will receive a certificate warning but continue.

Press the joystick to check the two "Certificate Uses"  checkboxes and confirm with OK.

 
Voila - you can now connect to Gmail with the POP and SMTP setting as pop.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com without getting the "untrusted certificate" warning.

Thanks for the added information Thomas and Rafe!

When connecting to Gmail, does the following message ring a bell - "This site has sent an untrusted certificate. Continue anyway?" If it does you might want to consider changing your settings for Gmail on your Nokia E61.

If you change your outgoing mail server setting for gmail from "smtp.gmail.com" to "smtp.googlemail.com" and

your incoming mail server setting from "pop.gmail.com" to "pop.googlemail.com" on your Nokia E61 you will no longer recieve the untrusted certificate warning. 

You can now connect directly to gmail from your Nokia E61 without having the message pop-up. Four seconds and one click saved per connection

Why "www.e-series.org"?

Since I first heard about the E-series I thought it was a genius move by Nokia. To come out with not only one, but a whole suite of devices with an impressive feature set and similar functionality. I have been using smartphones for many years but most smartphones seems to be released by companies as standalone products and not as a suite. It is one device and then a next generation device or a slightly different version.

When I finally got my hands on a Nokia E61 I was ecstatic. However, I could hardly find any information about the E61 or the other E-series devices. I started this site to document how I use my Nokia E61 (and the Nokia E70) and share that information. If my ideas or experiences with the devices can help anyone that is great. It's the goal for this blog. To share information and learn from each other. I know, it sounds pretty corny but hey, if we share information we will all benefit.

I have a problem with my device can you help me?

Sure. I will try. I am by no means an expert. Just an avid user. Leave a comment in the most fitting blog entry and I and other readers will try to help out.

I cannot install  <insert application name here> application. I get the following error message  “Certificate Error contact the application supplier”.

For added protection against “malware” there is rather strict application signing procedure implemented for S60 3.0. The device comes with the standard setting to check for proper signatures and will not install if the application sigining is lacking, out of date etc. Although the intention behind the signing application is good it locks out a lot of applications that for some reason or not still hasn't been signed and approved.

To accept all applications and solve this issue:

Go to Tools > App. mgr > Options > Settings  Change “software installation” from “Signed Only” to “All” and “Onlline certic check” to “off”.

This will most likely solve your problem. However, please be aware that you turned off one extra layer of security for the device. I wouldn't worry too much about malware or viruses but it is a good role of thumb to only download and install applications from known sources.

I get an error message saying "This site has sent an untrusted certificate. Continue anyway?" whan I try to connect to Gmail. What is the problem?

Just change your incoming and outgoing mail server settings from "pop.gmail.com" to "pop.googlemail.com" and "smtp.gmail.com" to "smtp.googlemail.com"  to as described here.

How do I perform a factory reset on the Nokia E62? How do I perform a hard reset on the Nokia E62?

To hard reset and completely erase all data on the device and restore to factory settings type *#7370# (default lock code is 12345)

How do I change my voicemail number?

It took me forever before I found this one. To change the phone number of your voice mailbox Select Menu > Organiser > Voice mail. Press Options > Change number.

Acknowledgement

I want to take the opportunity to thank the following individuals for support and encouragement in creating and maintaining this blog:

Daniel, Rafe and Steve.

I have previously described how I use my Nokia E61 as an iPod Nano replacement and how I sync my Nokia E61 to my iTunes library. Well, earlier this week my transformation of the Nokia E61 as an iPod replacement took an important step forward.

One critical, but missing piece, was how to use my favourite set of headphones, Shure, with my Nokia E61. This lead me to order a Nokia AD-15 Audio Adapter.

Only *after* I placed my order did I discover through the help of a kind reader that there are plenty of cheaper no-name solutions that will let you plug a standard 3.5mm audio headset to the Nokia "Pop-Port". The Nokia AD-15 cost me about $15 and I think you can get the generic equivalent for a third of that price.

Here is the sweet set-up - my Nokia E61, the Nokia AD-15 Audio Adapter and the Shure E3c.

For those of you who are lucky owners of the Nokia E61, or any of the other E-Series devices, there is a Flickr Photo Pool dedicated to these devices. The Flickr pool is called "Nokia E61" but is open to all E-series devices. Feel free to upload some images of your devices. You can show just the device or try to showcase some feature or set-up unique to your device. Below are some of the images from the pool.

A few readers have asked me what theme I was using in the previous posting. I decided to focus this posting on how to personalize (read: "pimp") your Nokia E61 with themes.

Themes are downloaded and managed similarly to applications. They come in .sis files that you will need to install on your Nokia E61.

Just accept and install the themes. To enable and manage your themes go to Tools > Themes. 

From left to right, below are four example of themes 1) Standard Nokia 2) S60 Color 3) S60, and the last my favourite - 4) Aqua.

 
"Aqua" is the theme I used in my previous post. Auqa was created by the talented Roman Keller and is available for download. Thanks Roman for creating Aqua and sharing it with the rest of us.

Once again, below are the menu screens of the following themes from left to right 1) Standard Nokia 2) S60 Color 3) S60 4) Aqua.

As a "bonus" theme here is Dark Sky made by Toaster. Perhaps not the most practical theme but still quite nice in my book. There are many more Themes for the Nokia E61 here.

For those of you interested in learning more about themes and possibly create your own themes there is a free tool available. The S60 Theme Studio for Symbian OS  is available for download here. If you do create some unique themes and would like me to post them here please drop me a note. 

Here are some selected codes that could come in handy. The below codes all work with the Nokia E61:

To find out the WLAN MAC address of your Nokia E61 type *#62209526#

To find out the Bluetooth MAC address type *#2820#

To find out the software version and the release number of your device type *#0000#

To hard reset and completely erase all data on the device and restore to factory settings type *#7370# (default lock code is 12345)

To find out IMEI/International Mobile Equipment Identity number type *#06#

Imagine that you misplace your precious Nokia E61. A tragedy in itself but with the amount of information on the device it could be a disaster. There is a great, built-in feature that lets you lock your Nokia E61 remotely. This trick could save your day by preventing unauthorised access to your Nokia E61.

The only thing you need to do is to enable this feature and set up the lock code. You send an SMS with the lock code to your device to turn on the lock.

Go to Tools > Settings 

Security > Phone and SIM. Scroll down to "Allow remote lock" and toggle to yes.

Enter a remote lock code of at least 5 numbers and/or digits. 

Verify your remote lock code and then confirm the setting with your device lock code.

The default device lock code for all Nokia E61 is 12345. If you haven't already change your device lock code I encourage you to change it. Once you have confirmed with the lock code you have enabled remote lock of your Nokia E61.

By sending an SMS with the lock code in the message to your device you can now lock it down. 

Although this is far from an "enterprise strength" device management solution it is a great way to protect your device. Since this feature comes standard on all Nokia E61 (all S60 3rd edition devices) why not use it. It might save you one day.

Mobile Search is a a dedicated search application created by Nokia. Although there is no official client out for the Nokia E61 yet I decided to try out another S60 3rd edition client and see if it worked. It did. I did come across some minor anomalies but nothing big. I downloaded the Nokia N71 client.

Prepare yourself to click "continue" repeatedly as there are many plugins to be installed and each new plugin requires you to acknowledge the installation through pressing "continue"

The application has a robust, general search function and a specific search for images. You can add the search result to your bookmarks and also go to the relevant URL through the broswer.

Where the application really excels is in the area of local search and the many non US search partners. There are a number of local search partners available and I expect that many more will be added in the future.

Searches can be refined by adding a postcode, name of a city, village etc. Another cool feature is that you can choose to call the search results right away, add them to the address book or view the locations on a map.

The software is free and although it is not yet certified for the Nokia E61 the version I tried, Nokia N71, worked fine for me. 

A reader of E-Series - Michael F, was kind enough to create a new Nokia E61 icon for iSync. The icon is available here. To change the icon you are currently using just go to Library > PhonePlugins > Contents > Resources and open the MetaClasses.plist file.  Using  an HTML editor, change the string for Nokia E61 in the MetaClass.plist file to match the name of the name of the Nokia E61 icon tiff file you put in the folder. In this case the name of the icon is "E61.tiff"

If you have any problems, drop me a line and I'll email you the details.

Thanks Michael!

Thomas over at Trikenit.com has a great post about how to get a pushed base email experience for the Nokia E61 accessing gmail accounts. It's a workaround but clever and simple.

Thanks Thomas! 

I prefer most technical questions be posted in the comments section. Chances are that other readers have a solution or ideas about the same issue. You might get your questions answered sooner as well. Just pick a blog entry most relevant to your question.

However, having said that do feel free to drop me a note, tell me what you like or not like, what you would like to see in the future or just say hi. I tend to get a lot of email so it might take me some time before I get back to you.

There is a new version of Widsets out that works great with the Nokia E61.

Widsets, which I first wrote about here, is probably one of my top three software picks for the Nokia E61. This new version brings additional features and functionality to the already useful and nifty Widsets. If you haven't already installed Widsets on your Nokia E61 I encourage you to do so right away.

If you have Widsets installed on your device the update is a breeze. Just launch the application and download the update. If you don't have Widsets installed you can sign up for the free service and download the software here.

One of the new features is Audio Alarms, notifying when there is something new in the channels you subscribe to. You can set Widsets to vibrate or alert you with an Alarm. 

 
There were a lot of new, good Widsets available since I last took a look at the Widset library. I was happy to see a Technorati Widset available which I set up for the tag of "Nokia E61".

There are also an easier and better way to design your own Widsets. Although it is not representative of the new features of the skin editor I throw together a Widsets called E-Series.org so that you can access E-series on the go through Widsets. 

Another feature is the ability to more control and edit your Widsets from your Nokia E61. You can also see a list of new and available Widsets directly from your device. There are also other functionality that I didn't try out such as a commenting feature that lets you collaborate and send comments back to a service.

A feature that has been available since the start but that I didn't include in my original post about Widsets is the "bookmark feature". If you come across an article that you want to read more about later or save you can add it to your bookmarks.

The URL will be saved so that you can access the information from your Widsets control panel the next time you log in. All your saved links are in your bookmarks area.

A couple of readers have asked me how the backlit keyboard is on the Nokia E61 so I decided to post a photo of the backlit keyboard in full action.

It's quite bright and easy to use in the dark. There is a light sensor on the Nokia E61 that will activate the backlit keyboard function if you are in a dark enviroment. That way you conserve battery by not automatically switching on the backlit keyboard everytime you use the keyboard.