Eseries

This morning I went to my local Cingular store to pick up my pre-ordered Nokia E62. The price was $149 with a new contract with Cingular. It was a good thing I made Cingular set aside a device for me - I got the very last Nokia E62 they had in the store.

It is way too early to review the Nokia E62 but stay tuned. I will try to drill down through the differencies between the Nokia E61 and the Nokia E62. I don't plan to give up my trusted Nokia E61 but for the near term I plan to make the Nokia E62 my main device. 

Here are the obligatory unboxing pictures of the Nokia E62.

Nokia E62 comes in a bright, Cingular-Orange Box.

The first difference I noticed is that the included headset seems a bit nicer than the one that came with the E61. In addition, the sync cable is mini USB instead of the standard POP-port. 

The device also comes with Cingular specific CD and manual. I think the manual is better than the one for the Nokia E61. At least, it is more colorful and includes many screenshots. 

 
More to come… 

XAMoN has created a great Nokia E61 theme for us not suffering from Ophidiophobia

GreenSnake by XAMoN 

Thanks XAMoN

In the world of modding, doing the paint job yourself, is a notch above buying prepainted parts. Andres took the Nokia E61 modding to new levels and did the paint job himself.

Andres writes "I just finished my new E61 case mod. I used some Honda (Accura in theUS) S25 "graphic grey" which can be seen on S2000 roadster cars :). This is a dark grey with a metallic look. You don't see the metallic effect on my pictures to well, but in natural light it really looks great. Of course I had to cover the buttons and the message led with some duct tape in order not to paint them over. I'm really satisfied with the new look. It's different than blackberrys which have a flat black and it still has some shiny effect when it's put into sunlight."

Thanks for sharing the pictures Andres. Your Graphic Grey E61 looks *great*!

Feel inspired? If you plan to, or have already modded your Nokia E61 please share your pictures with us.

It's Saturday and I find myself catching up on email (I apologize for the delay in getting back to all of you who have written) and on what is going on in the blogosphere.

Daniel over at e61life has come up with the ingenious idea of launching a Theme Contest 2006 for Nokia S60 3rd Edition! This is a great initiative and I hope it spurs the creation of many more themes! Thanks Daniel for organizing this.

René over at e61addicted has started a very good and ambitious Nokia E61 bug tracking project. Well worth reading and participating in. By documenting bugs we discover we could actually help improving the Noki E61. Great idea René!

A good, new blog is Farhan's My Your's & Our E61, well worth reading.

Another new but promising blog about mobility in general, but with a nice, heavy bias towards the E61 is the blog with the Motorolaesque name of RMTWRKR.

Last but not least in the Nokia E61 blog list is e61bg. An interesting blog in Russian. Lot's of screenshots to look at if your Russian is a bit rusty.

Cases for the Nokia E61 and E62 always generate a lot of interest. Thimo sent me a link to PDAIR and I have to say that they really have a wide variety of cases for the E61/E62. Thanks Thimo!

Now I am off to Cingular to (hopefully) pick up my Nokia E62 ;-) 

Rapidshare is not the most intuitive service for file hosting. I admit that it is a bit of a hassle to use. However, it is *free* and since I need to conserve bandwidth I use them to host Nokia E61 themes.

Here's how you use Rapidshare in three easy steps:

1. Click on the Rapidshare link. Scroll down and click "Free" at the bottom right of the page:

2. Here comes the painful part. Rapidshare forces you to wait and stare at some stupid ad for about a minute. Wait until the countdown clock reaches zero.

3. Almost there! Enter the code and click "Download". That's it.

It’s Friday again and time for themes for the Nokia E62. This time the theme comes from Eero and some more themes from D3.

Eero sent me a theme called “Lamppu” which supposedly means “Lamp” in Finnish. It’s a bit spokey and reminds me of Scandinavian furniture but I like it.

Lamppu by Eero

D3 was kind enough to send me some more themes. This time - Warcraft themes. All the Warcraft themes are available for download.

Warcraft_Portal By D3

Warcraft_NE_D3 By D3

Warcraft_D3 By D3

More Nokia E61 themes on the theme page. If you are having problems installing the theme and get an error message about “Certificates” read this. There is a very simple solution.

Have you made any cool themes? send them to me so the rest of us can enjoy them.

A friend of mine ordered a Piel Frama case for the Nokia E61 and was kind enough to let me take a first, quick, look at the case. Piel Frama has some nice Nokia E61 cases in various colors and leathers. 

I didn't use the case long enough to be able to give a fair review of it but I liked it during the short time I had access to it.

The case come with a belt-clip that is also removable. I nice feature is that are slots for credit cards and MiniSD cards in the cover of the case.

 
The price, including shipping, anywhere in the world, is Euro 60.

Thanks Cyber D. 

Most of you know that in addition to being addicted to gadgets I am also a Flickrholic. I thought I should share some of my "Favorites" from Flickr. The picture are all from the E61 photo pool.

Feel free to upload some of your E61 and the rest of the E-series devices to the Flickr Photo Pool.

As promised, here are a number of fresh themes for the Nokia E61. Naturally, these themes also work for the Nokia E62. All themes are created by D3. Feel free to leave comments for D3. All the files are available for download in one package.

Glassopia by 3D

RoboticEye by 3D

Cataclysm by 3D

Abyss by 3D

More Nokia E61 themes are available on the theme page. If you are having problems installing the theme and get an error message about “Certificates” read this. There is a very simple solution. Have you made any cool themes? send them to me so the rest of us can enjoy them.

Bruce has done it again - this time created a pink Nokia E61 that pink loving Mobile Diva, Darla would kill for

Thanks Bruce! 

Roman keller is a talented creator of Nokia themes. He is the designer behind "Aqua" and "Blue Dream" to mention a few. I'm glad to see that he has included support for the Nokia E61 and the rest of the E-series devices for his recent theme "Cute Blue".

Thanks Roman!

My latest addition to the blogs I read on a daily basis is "My (and your) E61" - I have to say that the title alone is a winner. (Why didn't I think of such a great name for the blog). Anyway, the content is King! Check it out.

Welcome to the world of Nokia E61 blogs Jake, keep up the good work.

Tommi over at S60.com posted an interesting piece about the popularity of E-series blogs - mainly the Nokia E61 blogs. Well worth reading and commenting on.

More themes for Nokia E61 coming this weekend - stay tuned. 

Long time readers (3 month or so of this blog know that I like Widsets. But I am not alone. Quite a few people have written about Widsets. Antony, recently posted an interesting article about Widsets in S60tips.com.

Anyway, this morning when I started up Widsets I was met by the message below.

The new version includes changes and improvements to the client. Supposedly there is also a new easy way to create and publish widgets for your own blog or website. I already created an E-Series widsets but I have to see what is new with this version.

Must have software - Widsets for your Nokia E61 or Nokia E62

Many of us use the Nokia E61 as an essential business tool. It's always interesting to learn how other Nokia E61 users rely on the device in their daily work. I received an email from Daniel Cuthbert, a talented photographer in Bangkok who used the device to report on the coup in Thailand.

Being a photographer in Bangkok, as soon as i heard the news i grabbed the
camera bag and phone and rushed out.
The E-61 allowed me to keep the http://bangkok.metblogs.com site updated with
up2theminute reports on what was happening.

*now if it would only support compact flash cards and full image manipulation
and uploads, i wouldnt need a laptop.

I knew it would just be a matter of time before we got to see some seriously pimped Nokia E61. I am a big fan of modding and has been looking forward to seeing some differently colored Nokia E61.

Let it be known that I throw down my glove. Where are the pictures of the steel blue Nokia E61, or perhaps the red Nokia E61 or something else. Send me your pictures please!

A big thank you goes out to Bruce for sharing this with us - you are my new hero~! 

As many of you have noticed I am having some problems with my RSS feed on this site. I am trying to fix this but I am way over my head. If anyone out there with experience using Wordpress, Feedburner and RSS in general could help me I would greatly appreciate that. I realize that there is an extra empty line in the RSS feed but where in Wordpress and how do I change that?

Help us, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're our only hope.

Here are a few select themes for the Nokia E62. If you are having problems installing the themes for the Nokia E62 and get a “Certificate Error contact the application supplier” read here for a fix to that problem. 

If you have made some themes and want me to list them here or want to suggest other themes to add, please drop me a note.

The Dark Theme by alexandr3

Pearl Black by Alexx

Fire By ? 

igBase by I.G. 

Tree By ?

OrangeBlue By Pfleuger

Aqua By Roman Keller

Dark Sky By Toaster

BlueDream By Roman Keller

Blue Smile By Roman Keller

City By Daniel

White by Daniel

MacGraphite_N71 by ?

Day and Night by ? (DL link below)

Vista By? (DL link below)

Theme14 by? (DL link below)

Summer By ? (DL link below)

Flowers by ? (DL link below)

The above five themes Day and Night, Vista, Theme14, Summer and Flowers are available for download through Rapidshare here. Choose the "free" option, scroll down and pick the option to the right.

S60 White by S60 (temporarily not compatible with Nokia E62)

S60 Color by S60 (temporarily not compatible with Nokia E62)

The RealPlayer application on the Nokia E61 supports streaming of video and audio. The application works very well and you can easily listen to Internet radio broadcast on the Nokia E61. *IF* you know the URL that is.

The main obstacle for me, and probably many more Nokia E61 users, is that I don't have the URL to various radio stations and therefore not use this feature that much.

I recently received an email from Steve who was kind enough to send me 67 files with URLs to various Internet radio broadcasts in the UK. With Steve's UK Radio Links you have plenty of stations to choose from. I decided to compile a few of my favourite Bay Area stations and make them available as well. 

Here's how you can easily listen to these radio stations on your Nokia E61:

Download Steve's UK Radio Links and my (very modest collection) of Bay Area Radio Stations and transfer them to your "Videos" folder on your Nokia E61.

You can use Nokia PC Suite's Phone Browser on a PC or Mac's "Browse Device" function to copy the files to the Video folder. The file path is /C:/Data/Videos/

To access the radio stations go to Media > Gallery > Streaming Links

If it is the first time you use RealPlayer to stream media it will ask you to define the default access point first. Go to Media > RealPlayer > Options > Settings > Connections > Network to specify your preferred access point.

You can use the joystick to "browse" for radio stations or just start typing in the name of the station to quickly find the station you are looking for. 

Calling out for more radio stations!

Please send me .RAM files of your favourite radio stations. I will keep adding them to the above Zip packages so that we have more stations to choose from. Send your files to "ed youknowwhatgoeshere e-series.org" 

Thanks Steve!

Let's hope that you don't need this information but if you ever break the screen (Heaven forbid!) or the keyboard of your Nokia E61, you can buy spare Nokia E61 parts here. It's good to know that spare parts are available for the Nokia E61 and the rest of the E-series. devices.

Say that you scratch your Nokia E61 beyond recognition - then order a complete new casing for the E61 or just order the parts that you need. Handy-Designer can sell you the whole casing of the Nokia E61 or just a specific part.

One reader of the blog ordered the English keyboard of the Nokia E61 so that he could replace the Arabic keyboard that the unit came with.

 
If you are real hard core you order the complete casing and then walk over to your local auto body shop and have them custom paint your Nokia E61. Then you send me the exclusive pictures

UPDATE:

Alan told me that Cellular Nationwide Network also is selling Nokia E61 keyboards and the LCD screen 

Thanks to E61addicted for the insipration!

It’s been one hectic week in the land of Nokia E-series devices. The week couldn’t have started off better with the release of the do-it-yourself Nokia Phone Software Updates for the E-series. The firmware upgrade for the Nokia E61 seems to have gone smoothly for most of us (knock on wood) with BlackBerry Connect and Mail For Exchange still working fine.

Tuesday wasn’t too bad either with the US announcement of the Cingular branded Nokia E62. Wednesday was dedicated to two VoIP solutions for the Nokia E61 and yesterday I showed off the Vaja case for the Nokia E61 - Phew!

I think it is appropriate to end the working week with something lightweight - some Nokia E61 themes.

My dear uncle had a stroke yesterday so I think posting two dark, somber themes are in order.

The Dark Theme by alexandr3

Pearl Black by Alexx

More themes for Nokia E61 and Nokia E62 on the themes page.

As always, let me know if you have made any themes you would like me to list here or let me know what your favorite theme is.