Eseries

The first time I heard about Vaja was three months ago when a reader of the E-series.org wrote to me and absolutely raved about a leather case he had bought for the Nokia E61 from Vaja.

Since then there has been many blogs and customers praising Vaja for their carefully crafted handmade leather cases for the Nokia E61 - The Vitelino. Now I join them.

The package is simple and very stylish in a nice iPodeque way. As soon as you pick up the Vitelino you can tell that it is meticulously crafted. The seams are perfectly even and everything with the case feels flawless.

The case fits perfectly with the Nokia E61. All controls, buttons, ports and connectors are accessible through detailed cut-outs. There is also a speaker mesh protector.

The Vitelino can be customized in a number of ways including a wide variety of colors, belt clips and even personalizied with logo or name. It is truly a unique, handmade case. As for everything of exceptional quality you pay for a premium product. The baseline case is $60 but for that you get the crème de la crème of cases for the Nokia E61. 

Let me start by saying that I am by no means an expert on VoIP on the Nokia E61. I probably only know the very top of the VoIP iceberg. When I first got my Nokia E61 I tried to use the VoIP functionality but couldn't get it to work. I spent a few days trying to set it up but to no avail. I soon lost my patience and forgot about it. I focused on the many other features and applications available for the Nokia E61.

Set-up problems aside, another reason I lost interest is probably that I am not the right target for VoIP. I have a calling plan that provides me with more minutes than I can use and if that isn't enough, all weekends and evenings are free.

As is common, long distance or mobile-to-mobile doesn't matter since the effective price per minute is the same with my carriers' plan. For international calls I rely on prepaid telephone cards - I dial a local number, dial my pin code and then the international call I want to make. This way the cost for an International call drops to a cents per minute.

However, VoIP on the Nokia E61 is one of the most common questions I receive so there is clearly a large interest and demand for this feature. A week ago I thought  I should give VoIP on the E61 another chance. I came across two services/sites that I liked - Sipgate and VoXaLot.

I like these services because they have removed ALL the issues I had of setting up VoIP on the Nokia E61. Both Sipgate and VoXaLot has excellent support and documentation to make their services work on the E61. 

Sipgate let's you sign up for a German or UK (if you live in the UK) telephone number so that you can receive phone calls. Naturally, you can also call other Sipgate users for free. Their wordwide rates are also reasonable.

One reason I really like Sipgate is that as soon as you have registered as a new user (free) and signed in, Sipgate will generate all your personaliazed settings and display them on a webpage complete with screenshots for each of the set up steps on the Nokia E61. You will see each step of the set-up with your personalized settings as it should appear on your Nokia E61. With this brilliant set-up you CANNOT GO WRONG!

Simply register and sign in and you will see your own settings:

VoXaLot doesn't have the same personalized set-up page but it is as easy to set up. Thanks to very clear direction posted by Martin you can register and get it to work within a few minutes.

(Press in the joystick to get the selection screen below, in order to make an Internet call)

Another nice touch by VoXaLot is that voicemails you receive to your account will be forwarded to your email address as an attachment. Naturally, you can also dial in to pick up your voicemail but the added service to have them sent via email is very convenient. 

In addition to Sipgate and VoXaLot, there are many good "how to use VoIP on the Nokia E61" posts available. Pasha over at NokMe has written a great guide of how the set up of Nokia E61 for pbxes and Gizmo. There is also good information from Christian about using Nokia E61 with Asterisk. Last but not least, Martin has posted about using the Nokia E61 with FON.

So many VoIP solutions for the Nokia E61 - so little time… 

The Nokia E62 has finally found (a second) home in North America. Cingular will be offering the device for the amazingly low price of $149. 

At the risk at making hardcore Nokia E61 users' eyes roll, I really like the Nokia E62. Sure, it doesn't have WiFi or 3G and it does have less memory. However, the price is amazing and although I do like speedy downloads I think it is the right decision for the US market to skip on 3G and also WiFi for now. Especially since the price is so low. I also realize that the Nokia E62 in the US is more positioned as a mass market QWERTY device than the Nokia E61 could have been.

The Nokia E62 is being met by some great reviews. Gary Krakow at MSNBC loves it and even uncle Walter S. Mossberg at WSJ likes the Nokia E62 a lot!

The new firmware for the Nokia E61 brings about many changes and improvements. In addition to the list of changes reported on Symbian-Freak, I have also found that the menu shortcuts have changed. The previous layout was not the most intuitive. The new layout follows the logic and layout of the numeric keyboard. However, you now have to press the Blue Function key and the number in order to access the files and application.

I'm happy to report that I had no problems installing BlackBerry Connect and Mail For Exchange (ActiveSync protocol) on my newly upgraded Nokia E61. I just downloaded the appropriate BlackBerry Connect Client and the Mail For Exchange Client and installed them. I was up and running in no time.

For those of us that prefers shortcuts, a convenient way to activate bluetooth is to press the "Blue Function" Key + "Ctrl" key.

To activate the infrared function press the "Blue Function" Key + "Chr" key.

Thanks Dias 

Rejoice - the long awaited firmware upgrade for the Nokia E61 is finally available!

The upgrade is available through Nokia's Software Updater - a Windows application that lets end user upgrade the firmware of their devices.

 

The firmware update deletes all data from the Nokia E61 so back up your contacts, applications and other data stored on the device. The charger must be connected when performing the update.

If there ever was a smooth upgrade then this was it. Everything worked like a charm. 

I received an email from a reader of E-Series.org, Kenneth, who successfully set up his Nokia E61 to print with a Brother Laser Jet printer. Below is Kenneth's email:

In an effort to use my E61 to its fullest potential I stumbled across an application in the Office folder called “Printers.” I (like probably most people) thought it was only for Bluetooth or maybe the even more rare infrared printers. However, at closer inspection I discovered that the application prints to supported HP printers through Bluetooth, Infrared or WLAN connections.

I started looking through all the documentation that came with the E61 but nothing told me how to connect to a networked printer. I finally found a document on Nokia’s E61 support website that helped.

Nokia E61 Printing Guide 

Here you will find the settings need to connect to a network printer. Here are the things you need:

Your Nokia E61 supports the LPR print protocol. For details on the protocols, refer to your printer documentation.
• The IP address or DNS name of the printer.
• The user name. This is only needed if the printer requires it.
• The queue name.

I tried using the DNS name but never got a connection using my Brother laser printer.  It was not until I used the IP address that I got a connection.  My printer had no user name so I left it blank.  I found the queue name under the port setting in my printer and faxes control panel.  After that I was able to print emails using my printer. I had some problems printing Office documents transferred to my E61 as the formatting was not correct and it had a tendency to spit out random blank pieces of paper.  Using Office docs created with the E61 printed fine. 

Thank you for sharing Kenneth!

If you have any tips or tricks you would like to share with the rest of us please drop me a note. 

The orginal idea with this blog was to focus on all E-Series devices. Well, well as often is the case you have one idea but in reality it turns out quite different.

I must have focused 95% of my posts on the E61. Luckily, a lot of the posts are applicable to the rest of the excellent E-Series devices. On that note, there is a great review and write-up of the Nokia E60 by Nico over at About-Nokia. Well worth reading. 

It seems as if Nokia's N-series of devices often get some innovative software before they are available on other devices (read: before they are available on the E-series). Often, these applications also work (more or less) on the E-Series devices.

This is true for Nokia's Park WiFi application suite. Although the application is for Nokia N80 and N91, it works on the Nokia E61. Because the application is not optimized for the Nokia E61 there is a great deal of unused screen real estate.

The suite contains three separate applications - Park Channels, ParkCast and Park WiFi Detector.

Park Channels contains various content from media companies, for an example NY Times.

Park Cast is application which lets you listen to various local NY radio stations and Park Wifi Detector is… a WiFi Detector.

The application is available for download here. I picked the N91 version. As I mentioned, the application is not optimized for the Nokia E61 so expect some anomalies.

Unless you buy your Nokia E61 from a carrier, which also promotes the use of mobile IM, there is no* way of using the built-in IM client. There are IM applications alternative for the Nokia E61 - IM+ and Agile Mobile per a previous post.

However, those applications are not the only IM applications for the Nokia E61. There are other alternatives. 

NootMobile is a browser based IM application that just declared Beta. The solution is, understandably, not yet fully baked. There is support for MSN with support for Yahoo and AOL coming. I wasn't terribly impressed with the overall solution. It feels a bit odd to me to use the browser as my IM application. However, it is free and if you really want to IM it is well worth evaluating.

I am more impressed with Nimbuzz (is it just me or aren't these two names a bit wacky ) Nimbuzz has taken a different approach and offer a free Java client. They support MSN and Googletalk, although I wasn't able to get Googletalk to work. The Nimbuzz client is also in Beta and is, naturally, a bit rough in its present shape.

However, the company behind the client has great aspirations and plan to add voice support in the future. I will be keeping an eye on both of these companies.

*I tried connecting the native IM client to Smartvas and almost made it work. However, Smartvas seems to have disappeard.

Thanks Thimo.

UPDATE:

Talking about Mobile IM, Agile Mobile has been updated and now fixed many of the original bugs on the E61. The new version is a big improvement. Download from here.

I have mentioned before how much I like the application Calcium. Now mtvoid, the makers of Calcium and Control Freak, has released a new version of Calcium.

The new version of Calcium is optimized for the Nokia E61's 320 x 240 screen as well as fixes the decimal point bug. The new version of Calcium is available here.

I have received a number of emails from readers complaining about the awful sound of standard calendar alarm of the Nokia E61.

I have to agree with them. The standard alarm is torture to my ears. Over the last few months I have developed a severe dislike for the alarm and judging by the amount of emails I have received regarding this topic I am not alone. Yes, you could argue that the standard alarm does the trick - get your attention, but to the cost of your sanity.

A few readers also wanted to know whether there is a way to change the alarm or not. I assumed that the way to change the alarm would be in "Settings". After all, the clock's alarm can be changed in the "Settings"

I have to admit that it took quite a while before I found that the way to change from the inhumane standard sound "Alarm 1.mid" is tucked away under the calendar application.

Just go to Settings > Calendar alarm tone to change to your sound of choice.

With some minor changes I can now enjoy Lust For Life as my alarm for calendar appointments.

Perhaps it is just me. Perhaps it is because I am platform switcher that I didn't think of looking for the setting under the application itself. Or perhaps the way to change the sound of all alarms *should be* accessible from "Settings" in "Tools". What do you think?

The list of interesting blogs to follow keeps getting longer. This time e-series.org contributor Daniel, and founder of the now defunct e60blog, is back with a blog dedicated to the Nokia E61 - aptly titled e61life.

Welcome back Daniel!

I recieved a few questions regarding what theme I used for the post about USB cradle for the Nokia E61. The theme is "Fire" and I have added it to the Nokia E61 theme page. I quite like it myself. It's very powerful and dramatic. For those of you who prefer a more clean, simple theme for your Nokia E61, I have also added a low-key, white theme from I.G.

Fire By ? 

igBase by I.G. 

Thanks Iann and Nitin.

I wrote about blogs I read on a daily basis back in July. Since then a number of new Nokia E61 blogs have sprung up. These blogs are really good and now part of what I read on a daily basis. I have added these Nokia E61 blogs to my "Daily Essentials" list.

Shaun McGill is the mastermind behind the very professional E61 blog. A very thorough and well written blog dedicated to the Nokia E61. Shaun sets the bar high, very, very high for the rest of us.

Regular participant in the comment section, Pasha, has created another great blog about the Nokia E61 - Nokia E61 Blog. Among many topics there is a great section about VOIP on the Nokia E61 and how to use it with Gizmo and pbxes. (A little sidenote - you gotta' love the URL for Pasha's blog…

The Fone Doc has started a blog titled All Things Fony! and covers mostly Nokia E61. It is a new blog but with a good start. I look forward to tracking the progress of the Fone Doc.

For those who speak French (or like me - wish you did) there is a new French blog dedicated to the Nokia E61 with the very appropriate name of - E61FR.

Last but certainly not least - there is Panos with his Mein Lebem Mit Dem E61 in German. Even if you don't speak German I suggest you take a look at Panos blog. There is lots to see - such as when he plants a tree on in front of the Nokia office!