Symbian in Motion

Skype users can start to relax now that fring is available for the N80 - with ‘preview’ versions available for other S60 3rd devices. As if you don’t already know, fring (beta) is a free app that allows you to use the VoIP and IM functionality of both Skype and GoogleTalk on your mobile device. Unlike most other Skype solutions for S60 3rd, fring does not require Skype to be running on your PC. There has been a great deal of buzz on various forums since the first S60 3rd version was released early last week. Discussion has gone back and forth but the big question is, “does it work”? Well I’ve been testing it for over a week now and on my N80IE with 6.032.0.38 firmware not only does it work, but it works very well!

To get the app you must fill in some simple info on the fring download page and you will quickly receive an sms with a link to download the app. A few things to note with regards to the installation: First, you should close all other apps while installing, setting up, and using fring. Also, I’ve had the best results with installing fring to my phone memory and I expect that you will find the same. When you run fring for the first time it will walk you through each step of the setup process. Once you’ve finished the setup, I recommend that you exit fring and restart your phone before trying to make any calls.

Upon opening fring it will connect automatically if your preferred connection type is available otherwise it will prompt you to select an available connection. You are automatically logged in to your configured services and your contacts are displayed along with their current status.

For testing purposes, I created a Skype account called “Fring Test” and you can see in the image above that fring sees me currently logged into my PC by displaying the green logo to the left of the user name. From there it’s quite simple to initiate a call by selecting [Options] and then [Call] or just pressing the select key with the appropriate contact highlighted.

Beginning a chat session is just as easy and while typing on both ends of the conversation below I found that fring loads new messages quite quickly.

Options for the app include displaying or hiding contacts in your device’s phonebook, a contacts search function, the ability to change the connection type without having to restart the app, and the option to dial a SkypeOut call (SkypeOut credit required).

Although it is recommended that fring is used with WLAN and 3G, I’ve also had fair experiences using fring over EDGE. The voice quality is not quite as good as WLAN of course but it is usable. I could not test over 3G as my phone does not support US 3G networks but the voice quality over WLAN is very good - about as good as most VoIP services that I use with the integrated Internet Telephone app on my phone.

All in all, I’m very impressed with fring. This is still an early version and of course there are a few things that need to be ironed out on versions for various devices. I should note that the fring support team is very good and very responsive and helpful. The ease of setup, ease of use, and functionality of this app are top notch and it will only get better as new versions are released - and it’s free!

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If you’ve ever been slightly jealous of your friend’s E61 because of the landscape display then you can stop living in envy! Landscape displays certainly come in handy when using the S60 3rd browser, viewing emails or sms, and in plenty of other instances. Well now your S60 3rd device can have landscape mode too - for free!

Start by downloading the trial version of ImageExpo by SysOpen Digia - a great and complex PC-based presentation and demonstration tool for Symbian devices. The trial does have limitations including a maximum connection time of two minutes, but that’s more than enough time to take care of your display aspect.

Once ImageExpo is installed on your PC, you’ll see a new shortcut folder on your desktop containing five Symbian installer files. Use Nokia PC Suite to install ImageExpo_S60_30_3.4.2.sisx to your device. This is the app that will allow you to connect your device to the ImageExpo PC app. Once you’ve done that, the rest is simple.

Open ImageExpo on your PC and you will see the connection screen. Now open the Connect app on your device and connect your phone to your PC using the USB cable (other connection methods supported). ImageExpo will quickly recognize your phone.

Now in the ImageExpo Menu at the top of the screen, go to “View” -> “Orientation” -> “Rotate Counter-Clockwise”. It’s as easy as that. Disconnect your phone and you’ve got a landscape mode device! To restore your standard display aspect, just restart your phone or reconnect to ImageExpo and change the orientation again.

One thing to note is that on some devices such as my N80IE, you may see a Multimedia Error constantly pop up on your screen. No worries, just use Best Taskman or another task manager capable of seeing hidden apps to close “Multimedia List”. Now you can go ahead and enjoy your new landscape display.

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UPDATE: This option is no longer available in updated versions of ImageExpo. I suggest you have a look at Rotate Me - an app that allows you to rotate your screen orientation right on your device!

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There are several applications out there that use GIF and PNG images that upon installation will be displayed in your image gallery. Examples are Tom Tom, older versions of Papyrus, and also QuickContacts which I reviewed yesterday. It was actually this review that prompted my post today.

Hiding these images is extremely simple and can be done for free with my favorite freeware browser - Y-Browser. Just make note of the image names that you want to hide from your gallery.

First open Y-browser and select [options] -> [search files]. Now in the “Filename” field, input a picture title followed by “.*” as pictured below (since you don’t know what format the picture is). Then select [Options] -> [Start search]. You do not need to do this if you know the directory where the images are stored of course.

Once you have found your file in the list of search results, highlight it and select [Options] -> [File] -> [Attributes].

Now simply change “System” and “Hidden” to yes and select [Save].

Now you can repeat this process for all of the images you want to be hidden. When you are finished, just exit Y-Browser and restart your phone. It’s that easy!

The applications using these images will still be able to access them as normal but you’ll no longer have these images cluttering up your gallery. You might be able to find a few other uses for this little trick but hey, I don’t want to know about it…

;)

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From the moment that I first synced my N80 with my Outlook contacts list, I wondered why the phonebook didn’t support T9. For people with several hundred contacts (or more!) browsing the phonebook without predictive input capabilities is quite bothersome. Luckily for me, VITO Technology agrees.

QuickContact is one of two contact managers currently available for S60 3rd devices. Compared on the most basic level to its competitor, QuickContact provides more functionality for half the price - with three different methods to browsing your contacts.

The first alone is worth the price of admission: Basic T9 support. This is how a smartphone phonebook should work. You begin by keying in the name (first or last) of the contact that you are searching for using T9, click select when you have entered enough characters to sufficiently narrow your search, and then select again with your desired contact highlighted. Plain and simple.

The second search method is rather unique and VITO refers to it as the “diamond panel”.

Press the directional keys as pictured by the panel beneath the contact list to select letter ranges in T9 fashion. You can choose two layouts - either “4 buttons” (only up, down, left, and right boxes contain letters) or “9 buttons” (all boxes immediately surrounding the center contain letters - and it actually should be eight instead of nine I think).

In the example above, the user has pressed [up] to select a letter from ‘A’ to ‘F’ and then [right] to select a letter from ‘M’ to ‘S’. I prefer the 4 button layout so that I only have to press a direction one time to select a letter. There is a slight lag in between direction presses but this can be easily resolved by pressing the center select key on your joystick to confirm your entry. This may be more helpful once you get used to this method because you can search faster by pressing [up] [select] [right] [select] than if you press [up] wait [right] wait. This will all make much more sense once you try the app, and it’s quite useful actually.

Once you get the hang of it, you’ll find that you can select a contact with one hand without even looking at your display. I liken it to the dawn of mobile sms. At first, it took some getting used to before people could type efficiently on the keypad of a mobile phone. Now you can find 12-year-old children on playgrounds in Finland typing sms messages at 100 words per minute…

The last search method is my least favorite and what VITO simply calls “boxes”.

I find this method more difficult than anything else but some users may enjoy it. Five empty boxes are displayed across the bottom of the screen and you press [up]/[down] to scroll through contacts one page at a time. When you have reached the first letter of the contact you are looking for, press [right] to select that letter. Subsequent presses of the [right] key will add additional letters to the boxes and [up]/[down] will change the letter in the last filled box. [Left] will go back one box.
As I said above, the T9 support alone makes this app a necessity for me. QuickContact is one of those apps where once you’ve tried it you don’t know how you managed without it.

The last thing I’d like to note in comparing QuickContact to the competition is something that many users may not notice but to me it’s a big deal. On my N80 where RAM is always at a premium, I need to keep as few non-essential apps open as possible to avoid lag and bogging. Once you initiate a call/sms/mms with QuickContact it closes immediately. The other app however, remains open and occupies 1.19MB of my precious RAM unless I remember to seek it out and shut it down.

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Have you ever found a game that you really wanted to try on your S60 3rd device but when you run it you find that it only takes up one third of your screen? Or perhaps the game resolution is too large and you can only see half of the screen. Maybe some of the games that you purchased for an old phone aren’t the proper resolution for your shiny new S60 3rd device. No problem! There’s an easy fix that anyone can perform and you’ll be running games at the proper resolution for your phone in no time.

Notes: This will work about 95% of the time on S60 3rd edition devices. I am fairly certain that this will not work on phones with a landscape-perspective display. I have not tested it on other Nokia models but feel free. This will work with many MIDlets by the way, not just games.

1. Using an archiver such as WinRAR, open the jar file.

2. Once you have opened the jar, you will see a folder called META-INF. Open this folder.

3. In the META-INF folder there will be one file called MANIFEST.MF. Drag this file onto your desktop and open it in notepad.

4. Now you must know 2 things to edit the file. First, you must know the original resolution of the game. Usually this information can be found on the author’s website. Second, you must know the resolution of your screen. Then type the following two lines at the end of the text at the end of the MANIFEST.MF file:

Nokia-MIDlet-Original-Display-Size: www,xxx
Nokia-MIDlet-Target-Display-Size: yyy,zzz

In the example above ‘www,xxx’ represents the original resolution of the game. ‘yyy,zzz’ represents the resolution of your phone’s display.

In the picture example below, the original game resolution is 176×208 and the target resolution of my screen (N80IE) is 352×416.

5. Now save the changes in the MANIFEST.MF file and drag it back into the META-INF folder in your jar file to overwrite the old one.

6. That’s it! Now install the jar to your phone and enjoy your full screen game.

One last thing to note is that when you increase the resolution of a MIDlet it will run a bit slower in some cases. Hey, at least it’s running! Also, this is for private use only. Please be fair to the developers who put their hard time and effort into creating these games and do not post edited MIDlets on the net.

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