What is running in the background?

When S60 FP1 devices were being manufactured, everyone tried to make sense of what the Fp1 platform was to offer. The benefits are numerous, from faster reboot time to the availability of more RAM and a tweaked OS. However, one of the neat features of FP1 devices is related to how users can tell whether an application is running in the background without having to go to the “task manager”. This has become possible via the addition of a new icon to the menu. When an application runs in the background and you reach the name of that application on the menu, a new icon will notify you of its activity in the background.

What does this mean? It means that a screen reader like Nuance TALKS can easily label that icon, and users can also do it themselves. To do it, first press TALKS key+long 4 to activate the TALKS Graphics mode. Then go to the menu, open an app like Contacts, and press the Menu key to move to the Menu again without actually closing Contacts. You’ll notice that TALKS reads the name of 3 icons before it says “Contacts”. Now move to the Contacts app, close it, and move to the Menu. This time, TALKS just reads the name of 2 icons because Contacts is no longer running. This helps you become familiar with the icon name which is used to indicate if an application is open in the background.

Having recognized the name of that icon, open an application from the Menu, return to the Menu without closing that application, locate the application you’ve opened, and use the TALKS Object Viewer, TALKS key+long Select, to locate and label that icon. Alternatively, if you own an N82 and want to make use of this feature without labeling that icon, just post a comment and I’ll send my labeled N82 icons to your email address. For your information, when you send a comment to my blog posts, I receive an email which tells me what your email is.

N82 review part 2: 10 things to like about the N82

You know how picky I can sometimes become when it comes to analyzing a handset feature. If you think that’s not the case, just take a look at the first part of the N82 review,, focusing on its speakers.

However, when I say the N82 offers 10 really adorable features, I really mean it. And here I’m comparing the N82 with the N95 or the N95 8GB. My opinions may also be viewed as subjective or personal, but after reading my post decide how much we can be eye to eye.

 

When weight and form factor speak

Many of you know that I’m a huge fan of candybar handsets as opposed to sliders. I know the rationale behind slider phones and the benefits this form factor brings, but old habits die hard. I like my phone to be as sturdy as possible, and that’s what candybar phones like the N82 and N73 offer. Moreover, the N82 is one of the lightest Nseries devices around as it just weighs 114 g. The n95 weighs 120 g, the N95 8GB weighs 128 G, and the N81 weighs 140 g. Just placing all hardware components in a 114G package is amazing.

 

Battery type and capacity

The N82 uses a BP-6MT 1050mAH battery, whereas the N95 uses a BL-5F 950mAH battery. Although in this regard the N95 8GB has the upper hand with its BL-6F 1200mAH battery, I feel what the N82 offers is quite adequate for at least one heavy daily use. Moreover, this battery type is in accordance with the smaller weight of the N82 in comparison with the N95 and the N95 8GB.

 

A lot of available RAM

This is by far the most amazing feature. The N82 comes with 128MB of RAM, and after a boot you have about more than 92MB of RAM at your disposal. In this regard the N95 with its 30MB of RAM doesn’t come close, and the N82 has been nicknamed the “never-crashing handset” by many individuals. The N95 8GB is also a definite improvement in this regard. On demand paging is also responsible for this brilliant performance, and ODP has also found its way into the N95 and the N95 8GB.

 

The 3.5 MM audio jack

Yes, many Nseries devices have this nifty feature, allowing users to use whatever headphones they want. However, it’s the location of the 3.5 mm audio jack on the N82 that catches my eyes. It’s located to the left of the Power button, on top of the device. This makes possible for you to place your N82 in your pocket and easily plug in your headphones. Now consider its older sibling: the N95. There it’s located on the left side of the device, near the left speaker. Just imagine how you can plug in your headphones when the device is in your pocket.

 

The camera protector

In my opinion, the N82 offers the best physical protection for the camera, even compared with the N95. It’s also easier to remove this protection mechanism and later move it to its original location. This happens via an easy-to-press key above the camera. It moves to the left and right via the use of just one finger. To see how important it is, simply take into account the fact that the N95 8GB doesn’t offer a protecting mechanism for the camera at all.

 

The camera flash

If I were an imaging fan or if I were able to take advantage of this feature, I’d mention this at the top of the list. As mentioned by many N82 owners, the N82 comes with an integrated xenon flash. This means that the N82 can produce fabulous images in dark or low-light conditions. Neither the N95 nor the N95 8GB is capable of doing that, in spite of the fact that all 3 devices make use of a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss Optics lens.

 

The Camera and Gallery keys

Unlike similar offerings on the N95, the Camera and Gallery keys on the N82 have been designed in such a way that they cannot be pressed accidentally. The problematic Gallery key on the N95 was one of its weak points, but Nokia has taken care of that issue on the N82.

 

The location of the speakers

I know this is quite subjective, but I can’t describe how happy I am with N82’s speakers which have been placed on the right side of the device. Many of you may actually curse me for this opinion, but I’ve never felt comfortable with the location of the N95/N95 8GB speakers on both sides of the device. I think it gets in the way of enjoying the stereo effect produced by the speakers.

 

Spacious keypad keys

Here I’m not going to talk about the joystick as I’m not really impressed with it. However, I think the N82’s keypad keys are excellent when it comes to typing. The keys are a bit smaller than what you can find on other Nseries devices, but the space between a key and its adjacent keys allows for a smoother typing experience. This is a big improvement over the N73, too.

 

Excellent screen protection

The N82’s screen is protected in a way that dust or other particles cannot easily penetrate it, whereas the N95 and the N95 8GB simply don’t offer such an impenetrable protection.

 

Are there any other features which could have found their way into the list? If so, let us know. I’ll also be creating another list for the things that I dislike on the N82.

Revitalize your emails on your cell phone

For those of you who may be wondering what I was doing over the past few days, I was setting up my N82 to access the internet via my new provider. Many of you might say, come on, accessing internet on handsets isn’t new at all. Yes, provided that you’re not living in Iran. Here the main provider doesn’t offer internet or GPRS, to be more specific. However, a newly born provider does, and I can’t say how fabulous the experience has been in spite of the fact that the speed I’m getting is a bit faster than a K56 dial-up connection. No HSDPA whatsoever. But it’s a revolution in its own rights.

At any rate, one of the things I’ve accomplished is setting up the email client on the N82. Now I can easily send and receive email messages. For whatever it is worth, I’m using Gmail, because compared with other big names like Yahoo! it offers IMAP4, and it allows me to handle messages in a more efficient way. For instance, if I read a message on my N82, it also appears on my computer as “Read”. If I move it to a different folder on my computer, it also moves to the same folder on the phone. Also, IMAP4 allows me to store messages on the server if I wish.

To make the situation even more interesting, I’ve also used Gmail’s exciting feature which allows me to send and receive messages that belong to other accounts without even touching those accounts, and I’m taking advantage of that to work with my Comcast account. Just notice that all of this is taking place on my N82, courtesy of the GPRS service!

At any rate, if you also have a Gmail account and would like to set up your Nokia handset to access Gmail, follow these steps.

• First thing first: enable IMAP in your Gmail account settings. Simply log in to your account, go to settings and select “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” to do it. Having done so, sign out of Gmail.
• On your cell phone, select “Messaging” > “Options” > “Settings” > “E-mail” > “Mailboxes.”
  
• If you have never set up email on your phone before, select “Yes” to define a new mailbox. If you already have other mailboxes, select “Options” and then “New mailbox.”
  
• Select “Start” to begin the setup wizard.
  
• Select “IMAP4″ and then “Next.”
  
• Enter your Gmail username (including “@gmail.com”) as the email address and select “Next.”
  
• Enter “imap.gmail.com” as the incoming mail server and select “Next.”
  
• Enter “smtp.gmail.com” as the outgoing mail server and select “Next.”
  
• Select the appropriate access point and then “Next.” Here mine has been set to “Irancell GPRS.”
  
• Enter a descriptive name for the email account mailbox name. I’ve used “Gmail” for mine.
  
• Once your mailbox is set up, select it from the email mailbox settings screen.
  
• Select “Connection settings” > “Incoming e-mail.”
  
• Enter your Gmail username (including “@gmail.com”) and password.
  
• Select “SSL/TLS” for your security (ports) and define your port as “993.”
  
• Select “Back.”
  
• Select “Outgoing e-mail.”
  
• Enter your Gmail username (including “@gmail.com”) and password.
  
• Select “StartTLS” for your security (ports) and define your port as “587.”
  
• Select “Back” and change any other settings according to your preferences.
  

Congratulations! You can now read and write email on the go! Just notice that the Nokia email client offers you more settings for you to modify. For instance, you can opt to write a signature which would be added to the end of your outgoing messages. Also, as you’re using IMAP4, you can subscribe to other folders other than Inbox. By default, your phone only downloads messages which arrive in the Inbox folder. If you want to also view the contents of other folders, go to “Email settings”, select “Retrieval settings”, and select “Folder subscriptions.” Finally, in my opinion the nicest point about mobile access to email via Nokia’s email client is that by default just email headers are downloaded, meaning you control which email to open and which one to delete without having to download the whole message first.

If you have set up Gmail or other similar services on your S60 device, I’d be interested in knowing your comments and discovered tweaks.

Cell phones linked to sleep disorders?

While I was taking a look at my usual list of news articles, I came across this interesting article.

I for one oftentimes use the “Offline” profile as I go to bed every night. Sometimes I also switch off the phone just not to be disturbed by night owls. Go take a look.

N82 firmware update is a milestone

Yesterday I managed to update my N82 firmware to V11.0.117 10-12-07 RM-313 Nokia N82 (23.01). The update size was 98.4MB and with a 256KBPS ADSL connection it took less than 150 minutes to grab the update. It also took about 4 minutes in order for the firmware update to be transferred to the handset.

As updating was over and the phone restarted, TALKS started reading the phone screens immediately. In fact, neither was I forced to set the date/time, reinstall my applications, re-adjust the menu structure, restore my contacts, and so forth. This is “user data preservation (UDP)” in full swing.

I call this a milestone because the N82 is the first cell phone in general and the first Nokia handset in particular to have implemented user data preservation. Moreover, this is also a welcome change for Symbian screen reader users who won’t be forced to reinstall their screen readers if UDP finds its way into other Nokia handsets. Kudos to Nokia!

N82 Review: Part 1 the speakers

Now it’s more than 3 weeks that I have been using my N82. Simply put, it’s one of the best handsets that I’ve ever owned. I’m sure many of you have so far managed to get your hands on comprehensive N82 reviews and, as such, I don’t want to start by talking about its keypad. Rather, I’m going to follow a new approach and start by a feature that many of you, including myself, may be interested in: the N82 speakers.

Over the past couple years Nokia has managed to produce S60 handsets with fabulously-sounding speakers. After all, who can forget the N73, the N91, the N95, the N81 and the 5700 when it comes to talking about speakers? However, compared with the aforementioned cell phones, what N82 offers is quite frustrating. Not that it lacks the “base” effect or it cannot fill an empty room. On the contrary, the N82 scores well here, and the source of my complaint lies somewhere else.

Having made extensive use of the N82 and having seen a few more N82 handsets around, now I’m convinced that Nokia hasn’t paid enough attention to the speakers which come with the N82. If you start playing a track and crack up the volume to its maximum allowed state, you’ll easily notice that the voice quality decreases and the speakers start shaking. That’s not the case with the N81, the 5700 and the N95. More important than that, sometimes it looks as if the speakers were damaged. This becomes quite obvious if you play a piano-rich track. As a very good example, if you have access to Josh Groban’s album called “With You”, simply find the song titled “My heart was home again” and start playing it. This track starts with 7 seconds of piano, and as you listen to the piano you can see what I mean by N82’s damaged or “cracked” speakers, as if someone had used a sharp object to break the internal components of the speakers. To sum up, if you listen to a piano-rich track which is also a bit echoey, you’ll immediately wonder why the N82 uses such horrible speakers.

Now this effect totally goes away if you connect your N82 to a headset or music stand, so I think it has nothing to do with the software components which are responsible for audio production and handling. Yes, I know that the N82 is not Nokia’s flagship music handset, but, guys, here we’re talking about one of the most feature-rich handsets in the world. Many claim that its camera is simply the best among all handsets, so why shouldn’t get at least naturally-sounding speakers with the N82?

What do you think about this? Am I wrong in assuming that Nokia has little to be proud of if it decides to demonstrate the speakers which ship with the N82? And do you know of a good workaround to get rid of this annoyance?

N82 gets a new firmware

Today Nokia released a new firmware for the N82. It’s V11.0.117, and seems to be a minor update, mainly targeting bugs. Those who have updated their N82 report to have seen a slightly increased amount of RAM after the update. More importantly, N82 is the first Nokia handset to have received “user data preservation (UDP)”, which keeps data stored on the phone memory intact after the update. At any rate, the changelog for this firmware follows:

Camera application:

• Improvements of “Unexpected error…” probability when starting up with quick succession of camera lens cover open/close.

Music player (Music player stability):

• Fix for music player freeze when operating app from accessory remote controller e.g. BT headsets, AD-54 etc.

Map application:

• Reset fix when opening Map app from landmark app,
• Long Map app closing time,
• Address search in Chinese character.

One more point: to update your N82, you need the latest release of Nokia Software Updater.

I’ll be updating mine tomorrow, and will be reporting my findings afterwards.

Handy Taskman: a must-have application

It is not often that I call something a must-have application, but Handy Taskman truly deserves it.

As the name implies, it is an application which attempts to replace Nokia’s default task manager and, in return, provides users with more options. Let’s see what it does.

When it is installed, it gets added to the Applications folder. However, oftentimes it wouldn’t be necessary to access it by going to that folder. Instead, pressing and holding down the Menu key immediately activates Handy Taskman. As it activates, it displays a list of applications which are running in the background. Needless to say, pressing Select on each app simply opens it. But it’s “Soft Key 1″ which displays the real power of Handy Taskman.

As Soft Key 1 is pressed, users can opt to switch to the focused application, close it, kill it, and close all opened applications. Moreover, by selecting the “Lookup and start” option, users can simply start typing the first few letters of an application and activate it by pressing Select. This is pretty similar to what AppQLaunch does, with the exception that AppQLaunch doesn’t remove the letters which have already been typed into its edit field as one returns to use it, but Handy Taskman does.

Finally, selecting the “Memory details” option allows us to see the free RAM and the total RAM, the available phone memory capacity and the available memory card capacity. This, for instance, helped me know that my N82 has 120MB of RAM and in most circumstances about 90MB of the RAM is available to me.

To give this $20 application a try, visit this page. Do you think it is the best task manager available?

What is “demand paging”?

You might very well have heard the term “demand paging” when you read about handsets like the N95 8GB, the N82 and a few other cell phones. So what’s demand paging, and why is it so praised?

According to Wikipedia, demand paging is an application of virtual memory. In a system that uses demand paging, the operating system copies a disk page into physical memory only if an attempt is made to access it (i.e., if a page fault occurs). It follows that a process begins execution with none of its pages in physical memory, and many page faults will occur until most of a process’s working set of pages is located in physical memory. This is an example of lazy loading techniques.

What does all this rather technical discussion mean? Essentially, in a system which supports demand paging, if you open, say, 6 applications and work with one of them, just the app which is in the foreground uses RAM and other apps which are in the background don’t consume RAM. This results in a highly economical way of preserving the RAM.

Currently the N95 8GB and the N82 support demand paging. If you update your N95 to the latest 20.XX firmware, it’ll also take advantage of demand paging, and this is also true for the N73 ME, albeit with a less noticeable increase in the amount of available RAM. The N82, for instance, offers about 93MB of RAM as it restarts. The N95 with the latest firmware offers less than 30MB of RAM. Do you know of any other handsets in the market that offer demand paging?

N82 and “user data preservation” around the corner

Those who have used Nokia Software Updater at least once know that restoring the previously backed up data after a firmware update is quite painful. Add to that the nightmare of installing and configuring many applications. Now this may become history at least for the N82.

The first N82 firmware update (which is to become available soon) introduces a feature called “user data preservation”. It refers to the fact that as updating is over, everything should remain intact. Of course, backing up data before a firmware update must always remain a number-one priority for all.

At any rate, it wouldn’t be uncommon to see this feature making its way into other S60 handsets. Imagine a day when your screen reader immediately speaks after a firmware update. Are you optimistic? Nokia has something to surprise us daily!