Phone
Archived Posts from this Category
Sun 16th Mar 2008
Daring Fireball: Foot, Meet Bullet
Posted early in the morning, filed under Nokia E65.I’ve not commented on iPhone related stuff before: mainly because I don’t have an iPhone, and won’t be getting one any time soon. It’s not that I don’t want one, but they aren’t coming out in Australia, and my new phone has still got a long way to go before it is out of contract.
The latest post, however, piqued my interest. Because it doesn’t just apply to iPhone, or any handheld device, but any computing device in general:
How are they even going to know which apps do continue to run in the background? They won’t. A likely reaction would simply be to regret ever having junked up their iPhone with any third-party apps at all.
I have a Nokia E65, and one of the “great” features is true multi-tasking. I say “great”, because this feature burned me not too long ago.
I use Salling Clicker - mainly as an automated syncing system, but also for interaction between the phone and Mac in other ways - from a Growl message when I receive a phone call, and my iTunes pausing, to sending SMS via bluetooth. Typing is much faster on a normal keyboard! (Granted, this is using emitSMS, not Salling Clicker, but, meh).
Recently, I installed a bit of software that allowed me to download call and SMS lists, so I could access them and interpret my data usage patterns. It installed a background helper agent, which I didn’t even realise. Some time later I noticed I wasn’t receiving as many phone calls as before. It wasn’t a big difference since I mainly use the phone for calling, rather than receiving calls, but nonetheless it was a difference. When out at dinner with family, it came to a head. It turned out that every time someone tried to call me, the call was rejected, but not to voicemail. A second call immediately worked.
When a call came in, the phone displayed a (very short) out of memory error, and then this immediately disappeared. The light came on, which made me realise just how often it had occurred. I had seen the phone light turn on sometimes while my phone was next to me, but because the message was so short-lived, it had vanished by the time I looked at the screen. I’m talking less than a second here.
It turned out the faceless background app was using up all of the phone’s memory. Receiving a call initially failed, but if another call came immediately after, then it would work. I guess some memory was being freed, but being used again a short time later.
Long story short - I didn’t use the software I had installed, so junking it (and removing the installed helper, which wasn’t real easy) fixed the problem. But because the problem was intermittent, it was pretty hard to nail down.
I don’t even remember what the software was called. But I’m much more cautious about what I install onto my phone now.
Sun 17th Feb 2008
Fix Bluetooth connection errors with emitSMS
Posted early evening, filed under Phone.I use the excellent and free emitSMS for all of my SMS sending-from-my-Mac needs, and it works a treat. However, for some reason in the last couple of days it has stopped connecting properly to my phone, a Nokia E65.
I’ve had lots of hassles with this phone, and thought this might be just another one. But I’ve restarted both the phone and the Mac, and no joy.
If you look at the back of the emitSMS widget, you’ll be able to choose the serial port to connect to. If you try changing the port to one of the standard ones, it should give an almost immediate error. If you change it back to your phone’s serial port, and it hangs forever, there is a solution.
As can be seen from the image above, I’ve just created a second Dial-UpNetworking bluetooth port, and used that instead.
Open up System Preferences, and visit the Bluetooth panel. Select your phone, and select Edit Serial Ports… from the utility menu.
Add a new serial port using the plus button, and duplicate all of the settings.
Click Apply, and then change the serial port back in emitSMS. It should connect and identify your phone.
There are just a few things I don’t like so much about the Nokia E65.
Firstly, and foremostly, there is a noticeable delay when doing particular actions. For instance, pressing the Address Book key and then typing a name in means you invariably miss the first couple of letters. And it only sorts by the start of the name, not text within the name.
Secondly, and at times more annoyingly, if I happen to close the slide at the same time as another action happens, like someone hanging up on the other end of the phone, it turns off.
That’s right, the phone goes dead. I then need to wait (minutes, it feels like) for the phone to finish starting up again.
The camera is badly placed, too. Not that I want to do video calls, but I can’t see the caller and them see me at the same time. because there is only one camera, and it is on the back.
Another annoyance is that address book entries don’t have a default number by default. And it takes ages to go through (delays each time) to setup the defaults. And these don’t sync properly with Apple’s Address Book, so if you reset your phone (for instance, to see if you can fix the shutdown bug), you lose all of the defaults you have carefully set up.
There is no autolock. It prompts you to lock when you close the slide. You can install software to automatically lock after a period of time, but if you close the slide at the same time as when the autolock kicks in, the phone turns off.
Bluetooth appears a bit dodgy at times. Sometimes it no longer connects to my computer, and I need to restart my phone. I think it is more to do with the phone than the computer, but I’m not sure.
Battery life is crap. I didn’t want to have to charge my phone every night, but if I use WiFi, then I do. If I just use Bluetooth, which I need to have for synching, then it’s every second day.
Salling Clicker is awesome. I have an addon script that synchs my phone every day, and it displays incoming and outgoing caller information via Growl. It also fades my system volume, and pauses iTunes when I am on the phone. This is the sort of thing that computers should do. All of the time.
Address Book on OS X has a neato “Find Duplicates” feature. But it doesn’t do everything I need it to.
On a mobile phone (Nokia ones, at least) if you have more than one contact with the same number, it gets confused when one of them calls, and doesn’t know who to display on the caller list.
So, a proper “Find Duplicates” should find the same number, and even further, the equivalent number if using +countryCode numbering, and allow you to choose who gets to keep the number.
This is most noticed at workplaces, although when you have a couple, such as your parents, who have the same home phone number it also manifests. That is, assuming your parents are still living together, anyway.
I might have to knock together an AppleScript to do this. (This entry is a note to self about that).
I’m loving my new Nokia E65. It works with Salling Clicker (which I will register, it is just great!), as well as the Nokia-downloadable iSync plugin.
I’ve also bought nova media’s program for installing support for a wide range of phones SMS from Address Book. This too is very cool. I can now send (but not, unfortunately, read) text messages from the comfort of my keyboard.
I may write some scripts to automatically send the same SMS to a whole Address Book group. That would be fairly neat.
In terms of Salling Clicker and phone events, I’ve fallen in love with call notification (although, that may be also provided with the nova media plugin I’ve installed, I’ll find out when someone calls me), and proximity notifications. Such as being able to have Adium put me Away when I walk away from my machine. Autolock is also pretty cool.
I’m really liking the look of the Nokia E65 as my next phone.
It has WiFi, Bluetooth, and Nokia also supply an iSync plugin. And it works with Salling Clicker, which looks like the must have phone/Mac interface program.
Edit: Had N65 in the body, meant E65.
I received a comment on one of my blog posts about http://australia.sms-txt.co.uk, an apparently free method of sending SMS text messages over the internet.
Don’t use this system, for several extremely important reasons:
- Your recipient does not recieve your message, but instead a placeholder message, to which they must either send a premium priced message to a 19-number - minimum cost of 50c, I don’t know the actual cost, or visit a website, and pay 50c via PayPal to view the message.
- It’s system for sending a message requires you to add a person to your address book first, you can’t, like SMSPup.com.au send a message to someone, and then decide to add them to your Address Book.
- The system is very insecure. You are given a link with a number at the end to visit a website. It is possible to change this number, and then view the message of someone else. Or, at least, I assume it is. I wasn’t going to waste 50c to see if this is the case. If a message can only be viewed once, then it would be possible to hijack someone else’s messages, if you were prepared to pay the money, thus preventing them from viewing them.
- You cannot send a second message until a person has replied/retreived the first. What happens if the person chooses not to? You cannot send them another…
Thus, this system is not free. Whilst it costs nothing to send, it costs at least 50c to retrieve. This is contrary to the normal way SMS charges are applied in Australia, which are sender-based. At least you can choose not to retrieve a message, so if “James” keeps sending me SMSs, I can ignore him. Similar to how Optus keeps sending me advertising MMSs. And I keep ignoring them.
On the way to get a new brushcutter on Saturday, we saw an Ice-Cream van being fixed up by the RAA.
Since I had a brand new camera-phone, I just had to take a photo.
I’d forgotten this was how I’d removed the Operator Logo last time: I registered with SMSpup.com, and Australian Web-based SMS service. If you register you get a couple of points, and you only need one to get an operator logo.
Then make a custom operator logo, with no background, and make it so it is just whitespace (a single space works well). Then choose your provider, and then click Preview. You may need to re-choose the provider before clicking Send.
All done. When you receive the Operator Logo, it will default to being active, masking the YES OPTUS that was there, or whatever your provider displays.
If you ever want it back: Menu âžž Settings âžž Main Display âžž Operator logo âžž Off