Latest version of Fring v3.37 with facebook, last.fm plugin for your music treats

Platforms available by Fring
Symbian 8, Symbian 9,9.2, 9.3,Windows Mobile,Symbian UIQ,iPhone,Linux,JAVA ME.



My favorite messaging application.

Google Latitude

<-- download here

With Google Latitude, you can:

• See where your friends are and what they are up to
• Quickly contact them with SMS, IM, or a phone call
• Control what your location is and who gets to see it

Review on E63

E63 is a thicker dimension similar to Blackberry, E71 is much thinner. The casing is soft plastic and is more colorful and more suited for trendy users with a tight budget. The phone headset is a 3.5mm jack, no adapter needed if you are using your own better quality headphones. No GPS chipset, so great to get lost and explore.

Learn more from the youtube video post.

more E75 photos

E71 shortcuts and tips

Mainscreen

• Hold down 0 to enter web browser.
  
• Hold down * to turn on/off Bluetooth.
• Hold down End/Red to disconnect all data connections.
• Hold down Left Soft Key to read out sms.
  

Screensaver

• hold center navigation key to see the time and date.
  

WEB browser

• hold down 1 for bookmarks.
• hold down 2 to find something
  
• hold down 3 to go to previous page.
• hold down 5 to tab between open windows.
• hold down * to zoom in.
• hold down # to zoom out.
• hold down 8 for page overview.
• hold down 9 to go to a another web page.
• hold down 0 to got to the homepage.
• press Backspace to close current window.

Realplayer

• Fn + 2 for full screen.
• Hold navigation Up key for fast forward.
• Hold navigation Down key for rewind.

Low on battery juice on E71?

Recently my E71 had been running flat pretty quick. With normal usage of a few calls and messaging, the phone went from a full charge to flat in a matter of 3 days. Wow!! What happened???! Well..as puzzling as it could be, it was down to my installation of Garmin XT latest version 5. This version activate the cardrunner.dll on your sys\bin folder which runs garmin tsrautostart.exe file to run in the background.

How to get around this problem.

1) Install nokia's energy profiling program.

2) Close all phone programs and run the above program checking your phone running wattage. With the garmin tsrautostart.exe running in the phone's background, your power usage will be around 0.09-0.15w.

3) Plug your phone to your computer and access your memory card sys\bin folder and look for cardrunner.dll file.

4) Edit and rename the file (ex. disable_cardrunner.dll)

5) Now reset your phone and run nokia energy profiler again. You should see that your phone will be running about 0.02-0.14w. Yes..now you are getting the life back on your E71, you will get back the battery juice and the phone will last another 3-4 days more under normal usage.

6) However, do take note. Whenever you run your garmin xt, tsrautostart.exe will be ran and you will start losing battery juice. Reset your phone after you use garmin xt and things will be back to normal.

Hope this post helps.

E63 and E71 comparison

General 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network UMTS 900 / 2100
UMTS 850 / 1900 - American version
Announced 2008, November
Status Coming soon
Size Dimensions 113 x 59 x 13 mm, 87 cc
Weight 126 g
Display Type TFT, 16M colors
Size 320 x 240 pixels, 2.36 inches
- Full QWERTY keyboard
- Touch-sensitive Navi wheel
Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3, True Tones
Customization Download
Vibration Yes
Memory Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records Detailed, max 30 days
Card slot microSD (TransFlash), up to 8GB, hotswap
- 110 MB internal memory
Data GPRS Class 32, 100 kbps
HSCSD Yes
EDGE Class 32, 296 kbps
3G Yes, 384 kbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port Yes
USB Yes, v2.0 microUSB
Features OS Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 UI
Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Games Java downloadable
Colors Ultramarine Blue, Ruby Red
Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, flash, video (QVGA@15fps)
- Java MIDP 2.0
- MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player
- 3.5 mm audio output jack
- Office applications
- FM radio
- Push to talk
- Voice command/dial
- PIM including calendar, to-do list and printing
- Built-in handsfree
Battery Standard battery, Li-Po 1500 mAh (BP-4L)
Stand-by Up to 432 h
Talk time Up to 11 h












General 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100
HSDPA 850 / 1900 - American version
Announced 2008, June
Status Available. Released 2008, July
Size Dimensions 114 x 57 x 10 mm, 66 cc
Weight 127 g
Display Type TFT, 16M colors
Size 320 x 240 pixels, 2.36 inches
- Full QWERTY keyboard
- Five-way scroll key
Ringtones Type Polyphonic, Monophonic, MP3, True Tones
Customization Download
Vibration Yes
Memory Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records Detailed, max 30 days
Card slot microSD (TransFlash), up to 8GB, hotswap, buy memory
- 110 MB internal memory
- 128 MB SDRAM Memory
- ARM 11 369 MHz processor
Data GPRS Class 32, 100 kbps
HSCSD Yes
EDGE Class 32, 296 kbps
3G HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port Yes
USB Yes, v2.0 microUSB
Features OS Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 UI
Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Games Java downloadable, order now
Colors White Steel, Grey Steel
Camera 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, video(QVGA@15fps), flash; secondary videocall camera
- Built-in GPS receiver
- A-GPS function
- Java MIDP 2.0
- MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player
- Office applications
- FM radio
- Push to talk
- Voice command/dial
- PIM including calendar, to-do list and printing
- Built-in handsfree
Battery Standard battery, Li-Po 1500 mAh (BP-4L)
Stand-by Up to 410 h
Talk time Up to 10 h 30 min

Strip-down E71, new offering E63

Specification
113 x 59 x 13-mm / 126g form factor, 320 x 240 pixel display, quad-band GSM / EDGE with 660 minute talk / 432 hours standby, microSD memory slot with 110MB internal memory, 2 megapixel camera capable of QVGA video @ 15fps, and of course, Bluetooth. It'll also be released in WCDMA 900/2100, 850/1900, and 850/2100 configurations. Sorry, no HSDPA data or infrared like that found on the E71.

Before updating your E71 firmware, reset your phone to factory settings

Having updating my E71 to the just released new firmware updates (110.07.127), 1st time round while updating software, I waited for an hour while the installation screen shown 15mins to complete the process. On the screen, I am advised not the disconnect the usb cable else I will risk making my phone unworkable.

Having waited the full hour, my patience ran out. I took the courage to unplug the usb as there was no progress at all, and to my relief, my phone is still workable and still having the same setup and old firmware. After doing a bit of research online, I realised it was advisable to set my phone to it's default factory settings overwriting all my previous application installations. As I had already backup all my data using nokia pc suite, I decide to give it another go. I set *#7780# to reset to factory settings, password default 12345 and reinstall the new firmware version. This time round, the progress was definite in 15mins instead of the hour.

While updating firmware, you got to be careful not to disrupt any procedures during installation or you risk losing your phone to a corrupt system. Take extra care!

Firmware updates for E71 (110.07.127) and E66 (110.07.126)

Nokia just released new firmware updates for both the Nokia E71 (110.07.127) and the Nokia E66 (110.07.126).

Improvements are made on the camera, bluetooth and email software as well as bug fixes.

Before upgrading your phone's fireware, remember to backup your previous data.

16gb micro SD card from Sandisk

16gb storage capacity is a beef-up for you phone. Sandisk has always been a frontrunner in developing high capacity memory card. This latest addition to it's product line comes with a 5year warranty and quoted as built to last. I haven't laid my hands on this little beefcake as I wondered how it will perform as the speed class rating is only 2 at 2.2mb/s. I will recommend that we wait for the next class addition because at this capacity, if you don't want your phone loading your files like a snail, go for at least a class 6 (6.6mb/s) rated micro SD card and moreover, at us$99, it ain't a good deal.

Reading ebooks on your E-series

download software page


For those bookworms out there, if you have ever tried reading a pdf document on your phone, you will probably find it so cumbersome having to scroll left and right through a page that you gave up reading it. I downloaded mobipocket reader on my phone and tested some of the sample files loaded and found the words are all nicely laid across your phone screen and for turning pages, all you need to do is pressing the left/right scroll keys. To complement the reader, if you have lots of pdf or word files that you want to read, you can dowload the mobireader ebook creater to convert your files to mobi format. Best of all, both software are free.

E71 is tops in UK mobile choice consumer awards 2008!

If you are using an Nokia E71, here is great news!! Nokia E71 is the winner for the best phone award and best smartphone for this year's consumer awards in the UK.
This E71 baby is gonna be with me together for a long time.

News link

Nokia E75 photos

Saw some images taken on the web on the upcoming Nokia E75. Seems to be a prototype when this images are taken.

Special editions E71 by Goldstriker UK

If you want to go the extra mile to show how much you valued your E71 and have it show off it's might and glory, Goldstriker E71 18k white gold edition and 24k gold edition are something to savor the best in life. 18k white gold edition will set you back £599 and 24k gold edition £549.95. This is some serious bling bling.

2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter for Nokia Eseries

I wanted to try out my AKG K141studio headphones on my E71. So over the weekend, I went in search of an adapter jack for my E71. Managed to find this nice adapter with a short cable with the other end a 3.5mm connector. My AKG headphones are definitely a much better sounding headphones than the in the box headset cum mic. The mp3 files on my E71 played through my AKG sounded wonderfully. You can consider plugging in your personal hi-end headphones if you don't mind not using the wired mic. A worthwhile accessory to have and it doesn't cost you much.

Nokia energy profiler for your Eseries

If you are interested in how your Eseries processor perform in real-time measuring the memory, signal and network level, here it is. The notion of optimization your phone's performance will be shown on the graphs. Thus, you can trial and error different phone settings and stretch your phone's performance. download

Garmin mobile XT on your gps enabled Eseries

My wife got a Garmin Nuvi 250 for her car because she couldn't find her way around Cockeysville. I loved to travel and used to stop my car and look at the maps just to get to my destination. Since she got one for her car, it itched me for quite a while thinking of getting a nuvi but I wanted something I could carry around without a large touchscreen.
Part the reason why I bought the E71 is the built-in gps chip, and although there is nokia maps loaded on the phone, I wanted something that I didn't need to pay for data. Garmin mobile XT fits all my requirements. All I needed to do is to install the navigation software which is free and get my map for my gps E71, no monthly data fees at all. And it works just like any Garmin navigator application minus touch screen. The downside is that locking on to gps satellites on gps smartphones takes longer. Garmin website

NiceLight : Lighting up your Eseries

Probably you may not be the avid photographer that will use your phone built-in flashlight. But if you love reading in the dark or exploring dark places, here's NiceLight. NiceLight converts your phone into a portable lamp and torch. You can choose to turn on your flashlight to use as a torch or turn on your backlight of the phone and use it as a lamp. You could even turn it both on. Now here's your rechargable lighting machine. Link to NiceLight.

New E72 and E75 coming

Just when I thought probably another Eseries phone will be in the works and will take a couple of months before release since we just got our hands on the E71 and E66, here comes E72 and E75. So far there are hardly any images available yet, but I found this youtube video of the new models. E72 looks exactly the same as the E71, probably with some new added features. I hoped it will not tempt me to upgrade as my E71 is only a month old.

E72 has an all new color selection to choose from and E75 is a side slider with QWERTY keyboard. As I viewed through the youtube video, I noticed that the advertisement is made in Singapore from the scenery backdrop and caller names on the sms message.

Both phones are not officially released yet and there are no promo videos yet, I wonder how the video got leaked and how the guy who posted it got it. Anyway, if you have time to wait for the new Eseries, it should be an exciting new experience on the new phones.