Nokia 808 PureView for $599.99 at Amazon US

This is a third party seller and there are only two in stock, but Amazon US has the Nokia 808 PureView for just $599.99 now. That’s equivalent to about £316/€400. Amazon UK still has this priced quite high at £474.99, with Amazon Germany at €547.

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Tutorial : How to hard reset Nokia N900

UPDATE:

You will need:

• N900 (Charge up to at least 50%)
• PC
• Micro USB Cable
• Your IMEI number (go to settings>About Product or under your N900 battery)

Before you look at the instructions:

Backup the N900!

This process will wipe your photos and videos. Save precious data onto your computer. Simply drag and drop them over.

For content such as contacts/settings/bookmarks/applications list, use the Backup application on the N900, but backup to a memory card only. Do not back up onto N900 as that will get wiped.

You can drag files back over and restore backup from memory card afterwards.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Download and install Maemo 5 Flasher (Appropriate for your PC operating System – these instructions are for windows so download the windows one)

 Click http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/maemo-dev-env-downloads.php

2. Download PR 1.2 and eMMC content. You’ll need your IMEI

Click http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/nokia_N900.php

RX-51_2009SE_10.2010.13-2.VANILLA_PR_EMMC_MR0_ARM.bin

RX-51_2009SE_10.2010.19-1_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin << Global Release (Will vary depending on which one you download)

3. Move both .bin files to C:\Program Files\maemo\flasher-3.5

 4. Turn off N900. Connect MicroUSB cable but not N900. Whilst holding “U” on N900′s keyboard, attach to MicroUSB.

The Nokia logo will appear and a USB icon in top right corner. Do not at any point disconnect the cable or restart N900 until step 9.

5. On the PC, click Start>Run>CMD. You’ll see a black box appear.

6. Type or copy and paste

cd\program files\maemo\flasher-3.5

7. Type of copy and paste PR1.2 >>

flasher-3.5 -F RX-51_2009SE_10.2010.19-1_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -f

note, the file name will differ slightly with each PR1.2 regional variant. The above is for global version.

 Leave it for a couple of minutes whilst it flashes your N900 with PR1.2.

 Wait until it says “CMT Flashed successfully”.

 8. Now copy and paste

flasher-3.5 -FRX-51_2009SE_10.2010.13-2.VANILLA_PR_EMMC_MR0_ARM.bin -f -R

 Wait for it to finish it’s thing. You’ll know it’s finished when it says

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Tutorial : Hard reset your Nokia N8

If you’re unfortunate enough to encounter a problem on your Nokia N8, a hard reset maybe what you need to do. This wipes the entire phone memory and settings fresh to how it was (or should be) when you bought it. It’s also useful if you’re also unfortunate enough to have to send away your Nokia N8 for repair or exchange, or maybe in future  you maybe selling it and don’t want your information/details/media stored onto your device for someone else to access.

Hopefully unlike the N97, the N8 will not encounter hard-reset bugs where we constantly have to hard reset.

To hard reset the Nokia N8:

1) Turn off your phone

2) Hold “Volume Down + Camera Key + Menu Key” and press power button until your phone vibrates.

3) Wait until screen show properly… and welcome back!!

Comment from Sittiphol

Please note that I found these problems after doing full format:

1. I lost Ovi Maps. However, you could reinstall it by download it here

2. I also lost Ovi Store 2.0 and I can’t reinstall it since it always show “Unable to install”.

So please DON’T do full format if not neccessary or actually I must say that DO IT ONLY AS YOUR LAST CHOICE.

Forum Nokia via AAS

I have not tried this out myself and hope I’d never need to except for the curiosity maybe in a couple of weeks time to see how it functions. I hope to not be an expert of the S60 5th hard reset like the N97 had made me. Grrr.

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Tutorial : Stream media to your PC through DLNA on your Symbian^3 device

In recent post, we had a few puzzled users who didn’t know how to connect their device to a PC, some users suggested the highly acclaimed XBMC for streaming, but i always knew there were simpler ways, so i researched a bit, and here is my tutorial on how use the “Play to” app. This is for people don’t have any DLNA certified device ( TV, PS3 for example ), but only have a PC, like me.

The Nokia “play to” uses the mobile DLNA protocol to stream media ( includes photos, music and video ) to any DLNA compatible device. ( more about Digital Living Network Alliance here ) There are millions of DLNA certified devices which, when connected to the same WLAN network, can share it’s media. Neat household tech, and most importantly it’s very easy too. On with the tutorial then.

You need :

• to have the “Play to” app installed on your Symbian^3 device ( all except C6-01, who knows why ? )
• a WiFi connection, to which your PC/Laptop and your device can connect at the same time.
• the Windows Media player 12 ( The only version of WMP that fully supports all DLNA roles ) So, basically you need Windows 7 on your PC.

After you gather the above requirements right, we shall configure our client, the PC’s Windows Media Player.

The configuration is really a two clicks affair, you need to click the “Automatically allow devices to play my media” and the “Allow remote control of my player” options under the Stream tab in Windows Media Player library view.

You get prompts for confirming your selection, like this :

After giving permissions to the player, you are all set to stream/share media on your PC . Fire up the Play To app on your device, it will automatically search for DLNA devices and will show you the options to select, like this

The icon on the top right hand side is the one that indicates that streaming is in progress.You can click it to terminate the connection too. 

The Play symbol in the bottom bar, is the now playing/streaming icon. You can play/pause/seek music from the windows media player , also from the inbuilt music player, which has a very similar interface to the native music player for cover flow browsing, but the now playing differs and looks like this,

Videos can be streamed at full resolution i.e 720p and this, in my opinion is the most useful sharing option, we can instantly preview our videos . And it’s UI too is similar to the Videos native application.

It’s all very simple, just click any photo/music or video and there it is , on your PC monitor ,showing/playing your media through Windows Media Player.

Hope you liked my tutorial, do let me know if you face any problems.

Note : If “Play to” cannot find your PC, restart windows media player and do not play/view anything while trying to connect through DLNA.

Thanks and share this post if you like it !

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Tutorial : Change to Nokia Pure font now!

Nokia Pure , the new typeface , which was launched recently during the design week has garnered a lot of attention. The Brandbook blog has given us a glimpse of the new type face in this screenshot comparing the old Nokia Sans font and the new Pure font.

You might have seen a tutorial for changing the fonts (kind note : for symbian^3 devices only *including E7*) earlier, but there was a flaw , Qt apps broke. But now, after the release of beta Qt 4.7.2 those issues are gone and even Qt apps are sporting the new font. For example , the ovi store ,which used to break while it was in  Qt 4.7, proof here :

The above font , yeah you guessed it right, it’s the new Nokia Pure typeface.

Download Nokia Pure webfont

Thanks to the fine folks from art4symbian, the missing icons have been enabled ! 

Download Nokia Pure with mobile specific wingdings (Apparently it fixes the boldness issue too!)

A quick tutorial :

Here’s what you should do :

[For symbian^3 phones only,for other Symbian  devices (V5,V3) use FontRouter]

Get Qt 4.7.2 binaries : Core , Webkit , Mobility

1. Make sure you have a memory card in your Symbian^3 device ,use mass memory for the E7 .

2. Then get any True type font you wish ( should be of extension .ttf ) . for exampleNokia Pure.ttf

3. Now navigate to the Resource folder in memory card’s Root ( for example if M: is memory card , navigate to M:/Resource , if its not there, create one)

4.Now create a Folder called Fonts in M:/Resource ( So the folder path should beM:/Resource/Fonts )

5.Now this is the most important step :

Make four copies of the font you have and rename the same font to the corresponding filenames. ( for example: if you have helvetica(01).ttf rename it to nosnr60.ttf , like wise rename others to respective filenames given below )

nosnr60.ttf

nssb60.ttf

nstsb60.ttf

S60ZDIGI.ttf

6. After you have renamed to the above filenames, Copy them to the Fonts folder In M:/Resource/Fonts.

Now reboot the phone and enjoy your new fonts 

Update : It works for Nokia E7 too, just use mass memory instead of memory card.

Some screenshots, and limitations explained :

The limitations, for now , the only Pure font available for download is the webfont which does not include certain symbols , for example :

So, similar icons like space bar and other display just boxes or some garbage value. This is mainly because the font you downloaded is a web font which is not optimized for our devices. Also in list view, like in messages and contacts and wherever list is implemented, the font is slightly bolder.Example here :

Again all this trouble attributes the fact that it is indeed a webfont, not a mobile optimized font. I recommend setting the font size to small in the display settings.

One more problem is, the OS cannot read the fonts if your device is connected to the PC in mass storage mode( Your theme changes if u had installed that theme in mass memory, like wise applications turn into question marks ) but don’t worry , it will be all fine after removing the cable.

That’s it for now, do let us know if you have any trouble installing the fonts.

Quick trouble shooting guide :

• Make sure you have Qt 4.7. 2 installed. if you can run Kasvopus , you already have Qt 4.7.2.
• Make sure you give correct names for the fonts in the M:/Resource/Fonts directory.
• Always double check the tutorial if you get any error
• Do not forget to reboot once,after installation of Qt 4.7.2, also again,after the copying of those fonts.

Hat tip Craig’s Blog for Nokia Pure webfont , Art4Symbian for making it compatible to Symbian (Thanks for the Tip, Ravi)

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Tutorial : Porting Apps from iPhone and Android to Qt

Got an Android or iPhone App? Want an even larger audience and another distribution point? Port to Qt and get your awesome app on the Ovi Store. Forum Nokia has a helpful page on their Wiki detailing instructions on porting Android and iPhone apps to Qt. The page was updated last in June, so now Nokia have 24 Million smartphones, and 41% of the GLOBAL smartphone market share (up from 40% and 21 million). Today, OPK mentioned Nokia expects 50 Million Symbian^3 devices to be shipped over next few years (though what exact time scale is not mentioned) Now also note the possible Millions of MeeGo devices, not just from Nokia, but from the 20 partners lined up to make MeeGo devices. Plus there’s the Maemo 5 crowd (N900 users).

The programming language for Qt is C++. Modern classes and functions that are familiar from other technologies make it extremely easy to adapt to this language. If you are experienced with the Objective-C or Java™ programming language, you will have your first Qt C++ project running within hours.

Qt C++ is ideal for application logic, and the script-like Qt Quick speeds up the creation of advanced user interfaces. You can also write native platform code and call it from Qt, to reach each and every feature of the device.

Selecting one approach does not tie your hands. You can freely code the network functionality with low-level Qt and make things look smooth with QML and script

Qt provides all modern classes and functionalities familiar from iPhone and Android. This makes it easy to keep the application logic close to the original when porting

How to Proceed with Porting

• Porting from iPhone to Nokia Platforms – high-level starting guide for porting iPhone applications to Qt
• Porting from Android to Nokia Platforms – high-level starting guide for porting Android applications to Qt
• Fundamental use cases for porting iPhone and Android applications to Qt – a few powerful modules and how to port those to Qt
• Useful-porting-examples – common features needed for porting applications to Qt
• Qt Quick examples for porting – examples for creating fancy UI elements with Qt Quick
• Porting iPhone web app to WRT on Nokia devices, if your existing iPhone application is based on a server-side web implementation or is mostly implemented in HTML/CSS and JavaScript™ in the client side.
• WordPress developer story describes the real-life experience of porting an application from iPhone to Qt. Both iPhone and Qt sources of the WordPress client are also available as open source.

• See also Forum Nokia Design and User Experience Guide for ideas on how to achieve the best possible user experience when porting your application for Nokia devices.

WordPress Developer Story

As linked above, this is a neat one to take a look at as it’s first hand example of porting from iPhone to Qt.

To make a long story short, it is easy to keep the original structure of the application when porting from iPhone to Qt. You can directly rewrite the core code to Qt just by looking at the original source

Compared to many other platforms, tweaking of the UI is incredibly quick. You can set values, launch it on the desktop, and, if it looks good, add to the device style sheet and deploy for verification’

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Tutorial : Downloading Ovi Store .sis installation files from Desktop Web Browser for offline phone install

Here’s a very quick and useful tip from Laine Wallace of doitdifferent.wordpress.com on how to download the .sis/.sisx installation files directly from Ovi Store. Now why would you want this? Well you might not have WiFi or mobile data on your phone but may have access to a desktop with internet.

I’d sure as heck like a PC download and installation of apps as my uni accommodation this year has pants signal and NO WiFi. (Come on Ovi Suite!)

Installation instructions after the break!

1. Go to http://store.ovi.com/ from your desktop web browser
2. Sign in with your Ovi Account.

 Browse to the app you want, e.g. Nokia Battery Monitor. Note that when finding an app from search you’ll get “http://store.ovi.com/content/61776?clickSource=search&terminalId=N8-00“. Click on the application name to remove the source info so it will appear like this >>http://store.ovi.com/content/61776. Or just manually delete from “?”

1. Add  “/download” at the end of the URL: http://store.ovi.com/content/61776/download
2. Install as you wish! You can use Ovi Suite/PC Suite to install via cable/bluetooth or you can send the files over to your phone (again via cable or bluetooth) to install directly from your phone. I like the latter as then if I store that on memory card, I have copies I can reinstall later.

Some notes from Iain:

This only works for free apps, doesn’t seem to work for bought & paid apps. Still handy though!

If I can be bothered, I might write a bookmarklet to do it for you. Would this be of interest to anyone?

doitdifferent.wordpress.com

I’d be interested in a bookmarklet. More so if Nokia were to just make this an easy PC experience.

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