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Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Review: Best Touch-Screen Phone Under $200
Nov 26th
5530 XpressMusic: Best Touch-Screen Phone Under $200Everyone’s hawing and hemming about the latest super high-end handset, which means the low-ends don’t get much love. And it’s really too bad, because the 5530 XpressMusic is one of the most capable el cheapo phones out there. More inside.
Check Out the New Nokia 5800 xPressMusic here!
Hardware
The 5530 XpressMusic is a pretty pocketable phone. It’s small, thin, and fairly lightweight. It’s also solidly built, and not as cheap-feeling as the 5800 XpressMusic. Carrying it around was a heck of a lot more preferable than lugging around my monster-sized N97, despite the loss of a couple key features.
It’s interesting to note that, while the 5800 XpressMusic had actual buttons (Send/End/Menu) on its face, Nokia has opted to make those keys touch-sensitive areas. It works well, and I actually prefer these buttons to the tactile versions. It’s much easier to press in one-handed operation. The XpressMusic shortcut key is still not customizable, but works well for quick access to what will probably be your most used functions anyway. (with the exception being the “Share Online” shortcut, this is garbage)
Moving on to the display, I found the 5530XM touch-screen on par with the 5800 XpressMusic – that is to say, it could be a little bit more sensitive, a la N97.
Software
Even though the 5530XM runs the same flavor of Symbian S60 Fifth Edition as the N97 and 5800XM, it brings a few improvements to the table. Kinetic scrolling, long missing from the latter two phones (although recently added to the N97), is *almost* present everywhere: apparently someone at Nokia forgot to add it to the main menu. Transitions between screens are surprisingly fluid, and the phone gives you the feeling that it’s faster than it probably is. It definitely ups the user experience.
The web browser is based on WebKit, and renders webpages reasonably well. It’s not perfect, however. There’s two issues: first, there’s a lack of kinetic scrolling that’s evident when browsing nearly every page – you’re stuck having to “backscratch” the touch-screen to scroll down. It’s an obvious oversight, and I’m not sure why this wasn’t picked up during testing. And second, visiting certain sites like Gizmodo causes the application to suddenly quit. No warning. No error message. At least you get a nice transition out effect.
Data speeds on AT&T’s EDGE ran an average of 153.05 kbps down (20 KBps), compared to the 292.8 kbps theoretical max of the device. 20 KBps doesn’t sound too quick, but strangely enough I didn’t have a problem with EDGE. It was certainly browsable. (speed tests measured with mobilespeedtests.com)
Call Quality
As well as can be expected from a typical Nokia – that is to say, very good. The only problems I had were due to AT&T’s crapper network. Voices came over clearly, and I had no problems in this department.
Multimedia
The stereo speakers on the 5530XM, like the 5800XM, are very, very good. It’s hard to say which is better – my money’s on the 5800, but either way, music sounds great, and different from the typical “tinny” can speakers that are in most cell phones these days. Note that the Music Player on the 5530XM is the old version, not the newer one that’s present in the latest N97 update.
I also attempted to watch some YouTube clips – they worked, but the quality was so lousy that, in one tennis match, I could barely make out the players. Streaming video is probably not the 5530XM’s strong point.
The 5530XM includes some preinstalled games like the infamous Bounce, Trivial Pursuit, and Asphalt 4, American Idol, and Global Race Raging Thunder. After trying Bounce, I came to the realization that the 5530 simply can’t handle any serious 3D game – Bounce was choppy, laggy, and the controls are just plain lousy (no accelerometer support in this version). Trivial Pursuit, on the other hand, was a nice time-waster even though the computer cheated like hell.
Battery Life
In one word: excellent. I was able to go almost six days straight of random light/moderate usage before the phone crapped out on me, and that’s simply amazing. By comparison, I can only go, at best, two days on my N97 with the same usage. Sure, you can’t just compare the two like that (3G and a larger screen are probably a big reason why), but the 5530 XpressMusic is still a winner in my book when it comes to battery life.
Final Conclusions
I’d call the 5530 XpressMusic a budget phone that doesn’t feel like a budget phone. It’s got a lot going for it: solid yet lightweight, great battery life, amazing speakers. And it’s super cheap. Cheap enough that it can be found pretty consistently well below the $200 range, and it’s well worth it for the money. Of course, if you’re looking for GPS, or 3G, or an OS other than S60 Fifth Edition, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Check Out the New Nokia 5800 xPressMusic here!
Popularity: 65% [?]
Nokia – The Story Of the Cell Phone Giant!
Oct 17th
We already know that you love Nokia Cell Phones or you would not be here!
We thought that you may, much like we did, like to know more about the company that brings us the coolest electronic gadgets on earth. So we looked around the web and ran across this great little article on the history of the cell phone giant we call Nokia.
We were surprised to find out how old this company is and a lot more, so read on for the full story…
The History of Nokia
Author: Neo Nashville
Today, Nokia is the biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the world. But back when the Nokia Company was founded, all they made was paper.
The Nokia company was started in 1871, when Finnish engineer and paper mill owner Fredrik Idestam decided to go into partnership with his friend, the Finnish statesman Leo Mechelin. The new company was named after the town of Nokia, the site of one of Idestams paper mills. They expanded into electricity generation in 1902, which quickly overtook paper as the core business.
The first world war crippled the Nokia finances, and the firm had to be rescued by a firm known as Finnish Rubber Works, who produced galoshes and other rubber products. In 1922, the company also bought Finnish Cable Works, makers of telephone, telegraph, and electricity cables, although the three firms remained separate despite their shared ownership. In 1967, the three firms merged to form the Nokia Corporation. Between 1967 and 1990, the Nokia Corporation were involved, through their various divisions, in making a wide variety of products, including Wellington boots, automobile tyres, paper products, computers, TVs, capacitors and communications cables.
However, they abandoned all their other interests in the 1990s to concentrate solely on mobile and land based telecommunications, a market that was on the cusp of explosive growth.
Nokias first electronic device was a pulse analyser for nuclear power plants. They pioneered VHF radio, in conjunction with a company called Salora Oy, and later gave Finland its first mobile phone network. The ARP radio telephone network was one of the first of its kind in the world, and was certainly the most successful of any of the early mobile networks.
In the late 70s, Nokia pioneered the worlds first digital telecommunications switch, the DX200. In 1984 they bought out Salora Oy and formed a new mobile telecoms division, entitled Nokia-Mobira Oy, releasing their first product that same year, the Mobira Talkman, which was a transportable phone around the size of a briefcase that could be charged from a car cigarette lighter socket.
Three years later, they brought out one of the first hand held mobile telephones, the Mobira Cityman 900, which was a massive seller despite weighing a ton and costing a fortune. It earned the nickname The Gorba when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was seen in a news broadcast phoning his communications minister in Moscow from Helsinki on one of the units.
In 1989, Nokia-Mobira Oy changed their name to Nokia Mobile Phones, and soon became the most profitable arm of the whole corporation, which convinced them to ditch all their other interests in order to throw all their weight behind this lucrative new venture. It was a gamble that paid off, as they are now the biggest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world.
Vodafone offer a huge range of mobile phones and price plans. If you like Nokia phones, you will love the Nokia N97 with its super fast internet.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Neo_Nashville
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-History-of-Nokia&id=2459846
Popularity: 4% [?]
The Complete Nokia N97 Bug List
Oct 6th
Nokia N97 12.2.024 firmware was released on August 18, 2009.
It’s been a week since the N97 arrived at my door, and yet during that time I’ve seen some strange things. And not strange in a good way either.
Current status of the Nokia N97: The NAM version that I have is pretty stable. However, it sounds like the international versions are *still* having some major issues – see the comments below for more.
To anyone running v10 or v11, make sure you update to the latest firmware via Nokia Software Updater.
The following is my list of N97 problems, bugs, and other irregularities. Note that after the latest firmware update (12.0.024), some things have shifted to the “Fixed” heading.
Hardware
- Playing music seems to cause the phone to run much warmer than normal, which leads to the battery dying very quickly. The strange thing is the phone might not heat up until several hours AFTER you’ve finished playing music, in some kind of delayed reaction. The N97 is rated for up to 40 hours of music playback, and that leads me to believe there’s some kind of weird issue here. Update, sort of: I think this has been fixed.
- The lens cover mechanism has a tendency to scratch the plastic above the lens. Noticeable when the cover is opened. [Thanks Tuan]
Home Screen
- The portrait/landscape wallpaper display is screwy. When you use a standard 300×640 vertical image as your background, it will not display correctly in landscape mode. Basically, instead of rotating the image 90 degrees, the phone will take the middle 300 pixels and make an 640×300 image out of it – meaning you get a nice blown-up image in landscape view. Lovely! Fix: when creating a wallpaper image, use a 640×640 image. See my N97 wallpaper post for more details.
- Hitting certain keyboard keys repeatedly causes the screen to freeze for a lengthy amount of time. Basically, whenever you hit a non-numeric key, the screen clears for a quick second, showing only the background and a broken side menu. Pressing the button repeatedly causes some kind of loop, which lags the phone to all hell. Try it with the Uppercase + top row of keys for a bit ‘o fun.
Browser
- No way to enter a url in fullscreen mode without exiting back to windowed view.
Software
- [Help] No help topic for Sensor settings. I would love to know what sensors are affected by the “Off” settings. Proximity? Brightness? Accelerometer? All?
- [Profiles] My N97 randomly plays the Nokia tune for contacts that I have assigned a custom ringtone. Also randomly plays the tune as the default ringtone. Argggghh!
- [Photos] When viewing photos, auto-switching to landscape mode causes the menu options to disappear, but the menu option box remains.
- [Menu] No transitions when switching from one folder to another. Could just be the default themes, but the 5800XM default themes has them.
- [Menu] Quitting the Photos causes a Back button (instead of Exit) to appear in the resulting Menu screen. Pressing the Back button simply refreshes the Menu screen and changes the button to Exit.
- [Music Player] Not quite a bug, but more of a feature request: removing a connected set of headphones while listening to a song should automatically pause the song. I don’t really see the logic in having a song start blasting from the speakers just because you forgot to pause it when removing the ‘phones.
- [Music Player] Switching to another application while simultaneously playing several music files in a row messes up the progress bar. Instead of showing the current song’s progress, the bar will continually scroll from start to finish, cycling through all of the songs that were played outside of the Music Player app.
- [Messaging] The Messaging application sometimes fails to display the menu options upon loading. Instead, the phone just shows the leftover parts of the Home screen. The options are still there, and can still be activated by touch.
- [Messaging] A phone that has the option “Memory in use” set to Mass Memory, and has been disconnected from USB (Mass Storage mode) will show the error “Cannot access selected memory” for subsequent received messages. It will also change the default memory in use to Phone Memory. No fix, but you can switch back by going to Messaging -> Options -> Settings -> Other -> Memory in use -> E:Mass memory.
- [Messaging] There’s no way to transfer text messages from phone memory to Mass memory.
- [Stupid] The applications Boingo, Qik, and Joikuspot cannot be uninstalled, despite all of them being useless.
- [Nokia Messaging] Deleting consecutive emails too quickly in Nokia Messaging using the delete key (with delete confirmation turned off) sometimes crashes the program. Update: The new version of Nokia Messaging (10.0.1.14) now shows a dialog box that says “Deleting” without actually deleting anything. It also freezes there unless you hit the Cancel button.
- [Active Notes] Entering a note with the keyboard in Active Notes is uncommonly laggy. This does not occur in the regular Notes application, or if entering notes with the virtual keyboard.
Fixed in N97 Firmware Update 12.2.024
- The lock/unlock switch is still seriously buggy. A good amount of the time the phone will either NOT lock or NOT unlock even though the screen will flash. Come on, Nokia.
Fixed in N97 Firmware Update 11.2.021
- 3G causes the N97 to crash and reboot endlessly. This only seems to happen in certain areas, leading me to believe that the N97 has problems with one of the two 3G bands on AT&T (850 or 1900). Any use of 3G causes endless reboots in any application that uses 3G. Fix: switch your phone to use EDGE, or get a new SIM card from AT&T. More info at [Nokia Support Discussions]
- Unlocking the phone via lock switch will not activate the backlight most of the time. This happens on the first unlock after an idle period – subsequent unlocks will activate the backlight until the phone goes into idle mode again. Seems to be a pretty universal problem. Extremely annoying because I have to hit the unlock switch a minimum of three times, usually more. No fix yet. Workaround: Hit the Menu Key [thanks Jasz] or Camera Key [me] to turn the backlight on before hitting the unlock key.
- Unlocking the phone via slide sometimes shows the message “Use keyguard switch to unlock screen and keys” for 1-2 seconds.
- Unlocking the phone via slide while in landscape mode will sometimes cause the screen to reset to portrait mode for a quick second before reverting to landscape mode.
- The phone can’t be locked or unlocked if the keyboard is open. This comes into play when the backlight bug above is triggered – you can’t just lock and unlock the phone to turn on the backlight. [no more backlight bug]
- Opening the browser and selecting Options -> Exit while loading up a default page sometimes crashes the application.
Final Notes
If you’ve found a bug, please add it in a comment below. Make sure you specify your phone model (RM-5xx) and software version (ie. 10.2.012). You can find your model/version by typing in *#0000# in the Dialer (or go to Settings -> Phone -> Phone mgmt -> Device updates). Thanks!
The Complete Nokia N97 Bug List
This article about Nokia N97 Bugs is as up to date as we can make it and shows off the newest bugs after the following firmware installation on your Nokia N97 cell phone. Please let us know if you have any additions and we will make sure to add them as soon as possible to “The Complete Nokia N97 Bug List” here on www.cheapnokia.com.
Nokia N97 12.2.024 firmware was released on August 18, 2009.
It’s been a week since the N97 arrived at my door, and yet during that time I’ve seen some strange things. And not strange in a good way either. So I’m making my official Nokia N97 bug post here and updating it as I see fit.
Current status of the Nokia N97: The NAM version that I have is pretty stable. However, it sounds like the international versions are *still* having some major issues – see the comments below for more.
To anyone running v10 or v11, make sure you update to the latest firmware via Nokia Software Updater.
The following is my list of N97 problems, bugs, and other irregularities. Note that after the latest firmware update (12.0.024), some things have shifted to the “Fixed” heading.
Hardware
- Playing music seems to cause the phone to run much warmer than normal, which leads to the battery dying very quickly. The strange thing is the phone might not heat up until several hours AFTER you’ve finished playing music, in some kind of delayed reaction. The N97 is rated for up to 40 hours of music playback, and that leads me to believe there’s some kind of weird issue here.
Update, sort of: I think this has been fixed.
- The lens cover mechanism has a tendency to scratch the plastic above the lens. Noticeable when the cover is opened.
Home Screen
- The portrait/landscape wallpaper display is screwy. When you use a standard 300×640 vertical image as your background, it will not display correctly in landscape mode. Basically, instead of rotating the image 90 degrees, the phone will take the middle 300 pixels and make an 640×300 image out of it – meaning you get a nice blown-up image in landscape view. Lovely! Fix: when creating a wallpaper image, use a 640×640 image. See my N97 wallpaper post for more details.
- Hitting certain keyboard keys repeatedly causes the screen to freeze for a lengthy amount of time. Basically, whenever you hit a non-numeric key, the screen clears for a quick second, showing only the background and a broken side menu. Pressing the button repeatedly causes some kind of loop, which lags the phone to all hell. Try it with the Uppercase + top row of keys for a bit ‘o fun.
Browser
- No way to enter a url in fullscreen mode without exiting back to windowed view.
Software
- [Help] No help topic for Sensor settings. I would love to know what sensors are affected by the “Off” settings. Proximity? Brightness? Accelerometer? All?
- [Profiles] My N97 randomly plays the Nokia tune for contacts that I have assigned a custom ringtone. Also randomly plays the tune as the default ringtone. Argggghh!
- [Photos] When viewing photos, auto-switching to landscape mode causes the menu options to disappear, but the menu option box remains.
- [Menu] No transitions when switching from one folder to another. Could just be the default themes, but the 5800XM default themes has them.
- [Menu] Quitting the Photos causes a Back button (instead of Exit) to appear in the resulting Menu screen. Pressing the Back button simply refreshes the Menu screen and changes the button to Exit.
- [Music Player] Not quite a bug, but more of a feature request: removing a connected set of headphones while listening to a song should automatically pause the song. I don’t really see the logic in having a song start blasting from the speakers just because you forgot to pause it when removing the ‘phones.
- [Music Player] Switching to another application while simultaneously playing several music files in a row messes up the progress bar. Instead of showing the current song’s progress, the bar will continually scroll from start to finish, cycling through all of the songs that were played outside of the Music Player app.
- [Messaging] The Messaging application sometimes fails to display the menu options upon loading. Instead, the phone just shows the leftover parts of the Home screen. The options are still there, and can still be activated by touch.
- [Messaging] A phone that has the option “Memory in use” set to Mass Memory, and has been disconnected from USB (Mass Storage mode) will show the error “Cannot access selected memory” for subsequent received messages. It will also change the default memory in use to Phone Memory. No fix, but you can switch back by going to Messaging -> Options -> Settings -> Other -> Memory in use -> E:Mass memory.
- [Messaging] There’s no way to transfer text messages from phone memory to Mass memory.
- [Stupid] The applications Boingo, Qik, and Joikuspot cannot be uninstalled, despite all of them being useless.
- [Nokia Messaging] Deleting consecutive emails too quickly in Nokia Messaging using the delete key (with delete confirmation turned off) sometimes crashes the program.
Update: The new version of Nokia Messaging (10.0.1.14) now shows a dialog box that says “Deleting” without actually deleting anything. It also freezes there unless you hit the Cancel button.
- [Active Notes] Entering a note with the keyboard in Active Notes is uncommonly laggy. This does not occur in the regular Notes application, or if entering notes with the virtual keyboard.
Fixed in N97 Firmware Update 12.2.024
- The lock/unlock switch is still seriously buggy. A good amount of the time the phone will either NOT lock or NOT unlock even though the screen will flash. Come on, Nokia.
Fixed in N97 Firmware Update 11.2.021
- 3G causes the N97 to crash and reboot endlessly. This only seems to happen in certain areas, leading me to believe that the N97 has problems with one of the two 3G bands on AT&T (850 or 1900). Any use of 3G causes endless reboots in any application that uses 3G. Fix: switch your phone to use EDGE, or get a new SIM card from AT&T.
- Unlocking the phone via lock switch will not activate the backlight most of the time. This happens on the first unlock after an idle period – subsequent unlocks will activate the backlight until the phone goes into idle mode again. Seems to be a pretty universal problem. Extremely annoying because I have to hit the unlock switch a minimum of three times, usually more. No fix yet. Workaround: Hit the Menu Key or Camera Key to turn the backlight on before hitting the unlock key.
- Unlocking the phone via slide sometimes shows the message “Use keyguard switch to unlock screen and keys” for 1-2 seconds.
- Unlocking the phone via slide while in landscape mode will sometimes cause the screen to reset to portrait mode for a quick second before reverting to landscape mode.
- The phone can’t be locked or unlocked if the keyboard is open. This comes into play when the backlight bug above is triggered – you can’t just lock and unlock the phone to turn on the backlight. [no more backlight bug]
- Opening the browser and selecting Options -> Exit while loading up a default page sometimes crashes the application.
Final Notes
If you’ve found a bug, please add it in a comment below. Make sure you specify your phone model (RM-5xx) and software version (ie. 10.2.012). You can find your model/version by typing in *#0000# in the Dialer (or go to Settings -> Phone -> Phone mgmt -> Device updates). Thanks!
Popularity: 4% [?]
How-To: Play DOS Games On Your Nokia N97 [DOSBox]
Aug 28th
Run some of the greatest DOS games on your Nokia N97!Before there was Windows, there was DOS. A command-line interface with nothing but text, text, and more text. During the ’80s and ’90s, DOS was the OS of choice for gaming. And there were lots of great games.
Flash-forward to today. Thanks to an open-source emulator called DOSBox, you can now run those oldies-but-goodies on your Nokia N97 (or 5800XM, or any other S60 3rd or 5th Edition phone, for that matter). This how-to will get you started installing and running games with DOSBox.
Let’s begin!
The Setup
You’ll need the following:
- DOSBox. Latest version as of this writing: 2009-06-23.
- Custom dosbox.conf and premapper.txt files. Dosbox.conf is a config file, and premapper is a key map file. I’ve zipped them both up for your enjoyment. More on this later.
- DOSBox Binary Dependencies. Required to run the program. Click the “Binary Dependencies” box to show the link.
Installation
1. Copy the following files to your N97, in any folder of your choosing. Do not install yet.
- glib.SIS (from Binary Dependencies zip file)
- pips_nokia_1_3_SS.sis (Binary Dependencies)
- SDL-1.2.13-s60-2.3.4_armv5.sisx (Binary Dependencies)
- ssl.SIS (Binary Dependencies)
- stdcpp.SIS (Binary Dependencies)
- stdioserver_s60_1_3_SS.SIS: this may refuse to install. If it doesn’t install, skip this file. (from Binary Dependencies zip file)
- full3/dosbox.sisx: note that this is the full version dosbox, not the slim one. The slim one is for crappier phones. It should be located in the full3 folder in the dosbox zip file.
2. On your E: (Mass Memory) drive, check to see that you have a Data folder. If not, create it. Also, create a Games folder. You can choose to copy games to this folder now or later.
3. Copy the following files to the Data folder in Step 2.
- dosbox.conf
- premapper.txt
4. Install all binary dependencies files first (i.e. the first six files in Step 1). These should install without any prompts.
5. Install dosbox.sisx. I installed it on my Mass Memory drive, but I doubt having it on the phone memory would make any difference.
6. Run DOSBox. If you’ve done everything correctly, you should see something that looks like this (my directory already has games in it, so it’ll probably be different):
Congratulations, you’re done with the first (major) part. You can safely type “exit” to quit.
Key Mapping
Before you go digging around DOSBox, you might want to read a little bit about key mapping, and which buttons do what:
I’ve included my default key map file (premapper.txt). Basically all of the letter keys should function properly, both lowercase and uppercase. The Function key (blue diagonal arrow) does nothing. However, the Sym key is extremely important – it toggles between the normal/letter mode and number/special character mode:
Press Sym to toggle number/special mode, and press it again to return to letter mode. In number mode, the following keys are different:
- The top row of keys will default to their correct number (ie Q will be 1, W will be 2, and P will be 0).
- The Backspace key is now an ESC/escape key. You might need this in certain games to quit.
- The S key is a / or forward slash key.
- The D key is a – or dash key.
- The arrow keys move the mouse cursor, instead of acting as arrow keys.
- The 5-way directional key (the key inside the arrow keys) functions as a left click.
- The Space Bar functions as a right click.
- The H, J, and K buttons are Home, Up, and Page Up, respectively.
- The B, N, and M buttons are Left, Down, and Right, respectively.
I’m still messing around with key mappings, so check back for updated versions. Next thing I’d like to add is a left click on touch in number mode.
Adding Games, Running DOSBox, and Navigating DOS
Next, you’ll need to find some old DOS games. There’s a lot of sites that host this stuff – simply Google “Abandonware” or “dos games” and you should come up with quite a few. Once you’ve gotten hold of some games, copy them to your E:\Games directory. It’s best to create directories for each game, since each game could have tons of little files, and you don’t want to drop everything into one directory.
Now load up DOSBox again. You should see some commands that were automatically entered (see Configuration and Key Mapping section for more), and a listing of the current directory. For now, here’s the basic commands necessary to navigate through DOS: (be sure to enter the command and then hit the enter key afterwards)
cd – switches to the directory you specify in . Without the of course.
cd.. – go back to the previous directory
dir – displays a list of files in the current directory
dir .exe or dir .bat – displays a list of files with the exe or bat extension. Works with any other extension also.
– run a file. Only works on executable files such as .exe, .bat, and .com.
exit – quit DOSBox.
Let’s go through an example. I’ve copied a game called “dune” to my Games folder.
C:/> cd dune
This switches to the “dune” directory.
C:\DUNE> dir .exe
This displays all of the executable files in the dune directory. Running the command on my N97, I see that there’s a DUNE2.EXE file. This should be the main executable file.
C:\DUNE> dune2
This runs the executable and loads the game. You don’t need to add the extension.
Not too bad, right? And if you need some game suggestions, here’s a couple that I’ve tried:
- Dune 2 (one of the first RTS games made, a little slow but very playable and still a lot of fun)
- Commander Keen (excellent classic side-scroller game)
- Dark Sun (oldschool RPG, slow but playable)
- Civilization (the original that started it all)
Configuration
DOSBox includes a dosbox.conf configuration file that you can use to change the options. I’ve made the following changes to the dosbox.conf:
- devicescreenwidth and devicescreenheight is set to match the N97 (640×360)
- mouse sensitivity is 500
- cycles = 3000 (default is 800)
- all sound (pc speaker and sound blaster sound effects) have been turned off to increase frame rate
- upon loading, DOSBox will automatically mount the E:\games drive, read the premapper.txt file in E:\data, go to the E:\games directory, and display all files in that directory
Feel free to change any or all of the above settings to whatever you’d like.
Things to Remember
- E:\games is the default games directory. You can change this in the dosbox.conf file.
- E:\data is the default data directory. Make sure you put the dosbox.conf and premapper.txt files here.
- The config file is set to automatically open up the E:\games folder and display the contents.
- Sound will kill your FPS.
- Changing your s60scale variable will too.
Other Stuff
- You can also apply the same steps to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. However, since the 5800XM has no physical keyboard, you’ll have to use a virtual keyboard – read the help files included with DOSBox for more info on this. I don’t have a 5800XM any more, so I can’t test this.
- If you’d like to install DOSBox for other platforms (like Windows or OS X), check out the official DOSBox page.
Credits
Well, for the most part the above was figured out by me. Credits, however, do go out to a user named Lorenzo over at the Sourceforge page, who provided a custom key map that I used as a base for my own mapping. And major props to kljc for porting DOSBox to the S60 Fifth Edition platform – if you like what he’s doing, consider donating to the DOSBox project.
Popularity: 99% [?]
Quick Tutorial: Hide Your Sound Files From the S60 Music Player
Jul 18th
Hide your sound files from the S60 Music Player.The situation: I have a lot of instrumental music that make great ring tones, but lousy listening music. I don’t want those songs showing up in my “All songs” play list in the S60 Music Player, because that means I have to create separate play lists that exclude those songs – which take time to create and continually update.
The solution: Dump your ringtone songs into one directory, hide it from the Music player, and use the All songs playlist to play your tracks.
The instructions: Inside.
Quick Summary
This trick works with pretty much any phone running S60 Third Edition and above (including Fifth Ed. touch-screen devices). The idea is that Music Player ignores any folder that is flagged as a System directory. So by attaching that flag via Y-Browser, we can hide songs or sound files that we only want to use for ringtones.
What You’ll Need
- Y-Browser, a signed freeware file browser application by DrJukka. Great program.
- Music files that you want to hide from the Music Player app
Instructions
1. Download, install, and run Y-Browser. Navigate to your music folder (probably E:\Sounds\Digital).
2. Move all of the sound files that you want to hide from Music Player into one directory – I call mine Instrumental. This may be extremely easy or extremely annoying, depending on how organized your music files are. Basically, you’ll need to highlight the files you want and do Options -> Edit -> Copy/Cut. Then go to your folder, and go to Options -> Edit -> Paste.
3. Select the folder that you want to hide.
4. Go to Options -> File -> Attributes.
5. Change the System value from No to Yes. Hit Save.
6. And you’re done!
The nice thing about this method is that even though your sound files are hidden from the Music Player, you can still view and use them as your ringing tones.
Now if only I could do this with the S60 Gallery…
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