The Nokia E90 Communicator Blog

For those who don't know: Nokia did revise E90 keyboard

2009-01-14T15:05:00.004+01:00

This may not be news to many of you, but Nokia has revised the keyboard that ships with the E90 Communicator last year. I myself had imprints of my fingers on the beautiful wide screen, which I had to wipe hundred times a day.

I called a Nokia service center today and learned that a keyboard switch for a newer receded keyboard is actually a free warranty covered service. So if this is one of the problems that bothers you, don't hesitate and get yours replaced. It may even be for free.

iPhone vs. Nokia E90: reception

2009-01-13T16:15:00.002+01:00

Nokia E90 wins in reception quality and in its ability to keep reception where iPhone becomes unavailable. This is normally a minor problem in urbanized areas and doesn't mean one phone is radically different or unusable over the other.

BUT, if you ever wondered, I've compared and this is what came out. iPhone had a slightly lower reception than the E90. So good news for the E90 folks. :)

Files on OVI.com unlike photo sharing NOT free

2008-07-18T10:49:00.004+02:00

OVI, Finnish for "door" started operation recently. It allows for excellent photo/video sharing with no limits other than the size of the uploaded file, which is 100 MB, a generous start.

Now even file storage has made it to OVI, allowing users to upload/share/send files from PC or their phone. This service is not free, though and Nokia will charge _something_ for 10GB of space. Also, Mac users are left behind, the service requires a PC with Windows, they state.

OVI photo sharing site renders nicely on Nokia E90, with an option to resize media to full screen. The whole service reminds a bit of flickr.com, too, which is not for the bad. We like it, and we do not like the new file sharing option with no free option. Google docs or box.net may be a better option.

Nokia Announces Nokia Chat

2008-07-14T09:40:00.001+02:00

Nokia has announced Nokia Chat, an application that uses the open Jabber standard for IM. In other words, Google Talk will work for now. The interesting part is that the application uses your GPS location and allows you to share that with your friends, who in turn can chat you up.

Scenrio: You're in town for lunch, see one of your friends close by, you chat him up, you two join each other for lunch without prior arrangements. Nice.

Side note: I just can't imagine going through loops explaining to all my friends how it works, why it works, how they should install, etc.. etc... For now, it's more of a tech demo for me.

http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/chat

Nokia E90 Security for the memory card

2008-04-09T13:53:00.006+02:00

I'm not sure people are aware of the built-in security in their Nokia phones. Especially for a mobile device that follows you arround everywhere, I think, security should be of particular interest.

You can lock your E90 remotely via SMS. All information in the phone is secured that way and only a password will unlock the phone. Great thing if you loose your phone or just forget it on the table of your office. Also, in case it gets stolen, you have peace of mind that at least your confidential data is completely inaccessible.

You can protect/lock/encrypt the removable SD memory card, so when someone gets access to your phone and steals the card, inserting it into an external usb card reader or another Nokia won't be of any use. This is excellent! :)

I actively use both of the above and see zero slow-down. Of course I could lock my phone automatically all the time, or use PIN request at each power up when you switch the phone, but why create annoyances and hurdles to irritate myself? IF the phone is stolen, I'll just lock it. Both the phone and the card are protected.

If, anyway, the card is changed, there is one more option:

ask for a security code when SIM changed.

iPhone, so far, has not caught up with these security features. But it'll come, too, I'm sure.

Creating track lists yourself

2008-01-11T10:02:00.000+01:00

Let's say you just ripped your CD and updated your Music player library (see previous posts), but the songs still don't show. The only way to play them would be one by one using the file browser. Not really...

Create a track list using a any simple text editor as shown below:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,01 Track 01
Der Bund der Rothaarigen\01 Track 01.m4a
#EXTINF:-1,02 Track 02
Der Bund der Rothaarigen\02 Track 02.m4a
#EXTINF:-1,03 Track 03
Der Bund der Rothaarigen\03 Track 03.m4a

... etc., and name it for instance Track list.m3u. The extension M3U is important, otherwise it's just a text note in your nokia. Now you can open the track list and play all tracks continuously without a break.

Keyboard shortcuts

2008-01-11T09:23:00.000+01:00

9300/9500 users must be a bit disappointed by the lack of shortcuts on the new E90 model. Well, there are some and they are mostly not documented anywhere so I'd like to compile a list of them here.

Image Gallery

0: full screen?
5: zoom in
*: full screen (not available on some language versions in the open mode due to complete lack of "*")
1: rotate

Web

B or 1: bookmarks
F or 2: find
P or 3: jump to previous page
W or 5: window
O or 8: overview
G or 9: go to URL, enter URL
H or 0: home

Maps

Left Shift: zoom in
Right Shift: zoom out
Ctrl: toggle day/night view
Space: toggle 2D/3D view

Post will be updated as I learn (and remember to publish) new shortcuts. :)

LAME MP3 vs iTunes AAC - Hydrogenaudio Forums

2008-01-10T09:04:00.000+01:00

LAME MP3 vs iTunes AAC - Hydrogenaudio Forums
post brings an interesting take on the MP3 vs. AAC dilemma. I guess that with AAC being so easy to use with iTunes (even keeping all ID3 tags nicely intact for the E90 including the cover art) it may be the most efficient choice. The maturity of LAME is, of course, intriguing.. :)

Update: Encoded an audio book in iTunes with the default "High quality setting", i.e. 128 AAC, edited all the tags, put up a cover and Music library finds NEITHER THE ALBUM NOR THE GENRE. Actually it doesn't even find the newly added songs. Moving around the memory card doesn't help either. Tried playing the folder in ALON's MP3 dictaphone, the best player for E90 out there, but it kept crashing on me so that I had to restart the phone several times. In the end I had to play each track one by one from the File browser. Awful!

So I guess for now I'm going to buy ALON's MP3 and encode all my audio and CD's with the standard and tested LAME MP3. Here are the recommended LAME MP3 encoder settings and I recommend you use Exact Audio Copy if you do this on Windows to do the job properly.

Music Player/Music Library ID3 Tag woes

2008-01-07T21:22:00.000+01:00

Nokia Music Player will automatically organize all your music/audio according to assigned ID3 Tags. These reside in each mp3, m4a, wma file. Problem is how to get the tags to show sometimes. Even the famed tag & rename may be of little help if there are discrepancies between version 1, 2, 3 ID3 Tags in the files. As far as tag support I think that Nokia basically supports ID3 version 2 in its Gallery application, but only ID3 version 1 in its Music Player. Also the music player may simply ignore the v2 if both versions are present.

Simplest solution to rip CD's and get them into your Nokia correctly?
After loosing time with different rippers, tag editors, Nokia music transfer, iTunes I have come to the following, very simple, procedure to add audio to your Nokia.

Use Windows Media Player (Yup... %-))
I set mine to WMA variable bit rate (why not if E90 supports it so nicely and it creates a nicely small file?) as shown in the screenshot.
Edit your tags to your heart's desire in the Windows Media Player.
Simply copy the files to the folder where you keep music on your Nokia.
Start the Music Player, Options, Update Library and you're set.

You can even create new custom genres and display everything properly in the Nokia music player.

Keywords: music, audio, ID3v1, ID3v2, best tag editor, editing, music info, artist, genre, album, transfer music, organize, converter, rip CD, listen CD

Quick Application Launcher, free

2008-01-07T10:56:00.000+01:00

Wow, Yohanes Nugroho has developed an application launcher for S60 3rd devices: type a few letters and start an application. No more navigating in the menus and folders.

AppQLaunch is free and seems to be the right thing for the left hotkey. So for instance to run your Quickoffice you just hit the hotkey to start the AppQLaunch and type "qui" and run it! :)

Keywords: application quick launcher, launching, launch, start, starting, run

Nokia Music Player and organizing your music and audio

2008-01-06T14:19:00.000+01:00

Nokia Music transfer is a terrible component of the PC Suite whose only useful feature may be the ability to create small +eAAC files (supposedly optimized for mobile phones). It can also edit tags, a feature of utmost important for later organization, but fails miserably to be taken seriously at all. These are some strong statements, but I will also show that there is a way out of this mess and it does not involve using the Nokia Music Transfer app, not even the PC Suite.

Music Player on S60 3rd

The application for playing music on Nokia E90 is the Music Player. Unlike the gallery application, which searches ALL folders on the phone's memory and its memory card, including hidden and system/hidden directories and throws all into a mega list of track names, the Music Player is capable of organizing the audio content, be it podcasts, audio books, or music into lists structured by Artists, Albums, Genres, etc... similar to Apple's iPod. The advantage to iPod is that music can be added on any computer. Files can be simply copied, no library or other locked down system is necessary.

The above makes the following scenario possible:

Connect your Nokia via USB cable and switch to Data Transfer Mode (not the PC Suite mode).
Copy the music, podcasts, audio books into the /Sounds/Digital directory. You can organize your files to your liking into Artist/Album/Track1..n directory structure. All files must be properly tagged for the Music Player app to categorize all properly.
Disconnect your phone, run the Music Player, go to Library, Update Library and you're set!

Tagging: the alpha and omega

Files can be organized in any directory structure: one huge directory, or one folder per artist, whatever. Music player does not care. What it does care about are the tags. Therefore, without proper tags you will be lost. I recommend using a proper tag editor (just google it for your platform) or use iTunes.

HUGE Advantages:

Absolutely open and cross-platform. Music can be uploaded, synced, exchanged between Mac/PC/Linux/whatever OS without a detriment. All you need to care about is proper tagging and use the Data Transfer Mode. None of this is possible on an iPod where you're locked to your own library for syncing (work-arounds exist, but they are compromises and not subject of this blog).
Unlike on an iPod, you are free to work with your files directly on the phone, move, delete, send them over email, bluetooth, etc. (no restrictions Zune friends).

And the Music Transfer app?

You can use it if you wish to rip CD's to the very small "mobile optimized" AAC. I don't recommend making playlists, or tagging as this does not work yet. Select multiple files and choose a genre (some crazy alternative like "General Jazz" for instance) and only a single file changes. Also, there is no way to create your own genres, so to tag something a Podcast is not yet possible.

I will post screenshots when I have time.

Keywords: Organizing, Organization, Management, Manager, Editor, Playing, Music, Player, Nokia S60, Podcasts, Audio books, Audio, iTunes, AAC, M4A

Image size for adding images to contacts

2008-01-04T12:21:00.000+01:00

Adding images to contacts is a good idea and speeds up caller's recognition on the display. Images/photos can be added in three ways:

* on the phone from the gallery application\
* from within outlook
* using the pc suite contacts application

Outlook will produce miserable quality, gallery may be a bit slow, but contacts application allows you to do some editing of the photo beforehand (e.g. increasing contrast) and resizing the image to the exact size that your Nokia phone expects. According to pc suite documentation the size is 80x96 pixels as the excerpt below states:

The thumbnail image size in Nokia Contacts Editor is 80 x 96 pixels, and any imported image is automatically resized to this size. Note that the image proportions can change in the resizing.

Keywords: size, photo, image, nokia, contacts, pixels, resolution, width, height

Nokia Network Bridge: no IP passthrough on E90, yet

2008-01-03T16:43:00.000+01:00

It seems that there exists one feature that the E90 lacks compared to its other siblings and that is the IP passthrough.

In short, there are 2 connection options when connecting E90 to a PC with a cable: PC Suite and Data transfer. One is for the general syncing and connectivity while the other is for plain and simple mounting of the memory card to transfer files back and forth. I will write later about the usefulness of this second option. On E61 though, there is a third option called IP passthrough. Selecting it allows the user to connect to internet via the host computer (acting as a network bridge). This may be very useful when connecting to a PC at work, at a friend, etc... and checking your email or downloading the newest podcasts to your nokia for the road using the Nokia podcasting app.

More on this on Nokia Network Bridge or just plain here.

Keywords: IP passthrough, internet connection via USB cable

Nokia LD-4W Bluetooth GPS Receiver

2008-01-02T16:29:00.001+01:00

GPS module in the E90 was specially designed by Nokia for their mobile phones to "eat" less battery power. It is therefore a bit weaker and actually quite weak when it comes to navigation in crowded cities. The newest firmware update providing A-GPS should help the situation, but there is also the option of using an external GPS receiver. E90 does not include the Sirf III so their accessory Nokia LD-4W Bluetooth GPS Receiver may be the right choice for in-car navigation. Nokia LD-4W actually DOES have the Sirf III technology mentioned above. 3rd party GPS units should also work with the E90 given the supposedly open API.

More photos of LD-4W.

Keywords: GPS, external, bluetooth, LD-4W, Sirf III

Memory management

2008-01-02T16:09:00.000+01:00

There are contradicting opinions on the memory management in the E90. Many think that by using the memory card for photos, videos, music, and 3rd party applications memory will be kept free just like RAM in a computer. This is not true as anyone with a 3rd party file manager showing C, D, and E drives, may observe. More about this on the post below:

Assigning some memory from disk C: to Working Memory - All About Symbian Forums

Keywords: memory, RAM, s60 3rd, symbian