Symbian in Motion

This came up in a conversation with Ricky and as it turns out from checking around several forums, this little trick isn’t as well known as I thought. Did you know that there are several applications on your s60 3rd device that you can’t access? I would think that this will vary from region to region but I have yet to see a device with apps like Navigator, Landmarks, and Positioning freely available in a menu. Why? Don’t ask me. Enough people have been ranting lately so I’m not going to go there…

Using an excellent (and affordable) payware task manager called Best Taskman by Smartphoneware, you can access and launch the various preinstalled apps that Nokia didn’t want to share with you. By the way, in my opinion Best Taskman is certainly true to its name and is by far the best task manager currently available for s60 3rd.

Once you’ve installed Best Taskman you must first enable “Show hidden apps” from within the Misc -> Options menu.

Now simply scroll over to the “Installed” apps view and take a look around. You’ll find a bunch of unfamiliar apps listed there - some can be opened and some can’t.

Landmarks might be an interesting app for some. Using landmarks along with a bluetooth GPS receiver you can record your GPS position and then message it to another s60 3rd device user (or you can enter a position manually). They can then use your “landmark message” to navigate right to your position! Pretty neat when you’re trying to find your friends at a bar across town or meet someone in an unfamiliar city.

You can also save your landmarks, categorize them, and use them for a variety of things. An example is in Handy Weather by Epocware. If your city is not listed in the database you can add it using a landmark instead of having to manually import the lat/long. There would probably be a myriad of creative landmark integrations that developers would come up with if this app was more accessible.

One last thing to note is that some people may have experienced problems when trying to use apps that require an external bluetooth GPS receiver. Within s60 3rd devices there is an app called Positioning that allows you to enable/disable your GPS methods. My N80 for example, shipped with bluetooth GPS disabled and I wasn’t able to use any navigation apps with my Nokia LD-3W until I enabled it.

Perhaps once Smart settings for s60 3rd is released we’ll have an easier way to access these apps but for the time being, Best Taskman is it.

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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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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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Before I get started on this entry, I’d like to give a big thanks to Tommi at Nokia for mentioning me on his blog. Tommi works in the s60 application development unit at Nokia and pens what is surely the most widely read s60 blog on the net: Tommi’s S60 Applications Blog. I’m sure that you already subscribe and read it religiously but if you don’t, you should! S60.blogs.com gives us all a great insight into the minds of various Nokia team members and provides constant information on the many events and developments that surround the s60 ecosystem. So thanks Tommi!

With that, I’ll move on to the first “Tips & Tricks” installment of my blog. Every so often I will provide what I hope to be some useful information that will help you get the most out of your s60 3rd device. I’ll also try to cover some of the topics that I see constantly questioned on the forum over at mobile9.com and elsewhere. One such topic is a problem that appears to be common to all s60 3rd devices.

Many people have experienced a bug where they will install a theme on their device but when they try to remove it using the Application Manager there is no entry for it. I still see this problem on the latest N80IE firmware and on newer firmware for other devices as well. Don’t despair though, as long as you install your themes to your memory card there is an easy way to remove those unwanted themes.

1. Connect your device to your PC in ‘Mass storage’ mode - or insert your Mini SD card into a card reader and connect it to your PC.

2. Once your PC recognizes your card a new drive will appear under ‘My Computer’. Open it, and browse to \private\10207114\import.

3. Browse through each of the folders in this directory to find the theme you would like to remove. The MBM, MIF, and SKN files in each folder should each be named after the theme - so if you want to remove a theme called “MyTheme”, look for “MyTheme.mbm” etc.

*Note that you may see some MBM/MIF/SKN files named simply “themepackage.mbm” etc. In this case, simply open the SKN file in Notepad and you will see the actual theme name in the first few lines of text. Here is an example:

In the example you can see that the actual name of the theme is N80 Simplified v2 (created by teddymustupo).

4. Once you’ve found the folder containing the theme files you’d like to remove, simply delete the contents of the folder (don’t delete the folder itself).

Now put your card back in your phone you’ll notice that the theme is no longer listed under themes and you’ve freed up some space on your memory card.

Note that in newer devices, theme folders/files are located in two different directories: [!:\private\10207114\import] and [!:\resource\skins] - delete the like-named folders from each directory to remove themes.

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