S60Tips.com

Nokia has recently released firmware updates for Nokia N95 family; but unfortunately not the North American variant yet. Since I have the classic Nokia N95 (a free gift for my participation at Forum Nokia Wiki), I tried to update my firmware as well. What happened? It won’t update on Windows Vista. There is an error message related to Nokia Service Layer Host Process (see screenshots below).

You won’t see this problem on Windows XP. It happens on Windows Vista only. Is there a solution to this problem? Should you just find an old computer with Windows XP? I found an interesting discussion at Nokia Support Discussions. Basically, what you need to do is retrying the update; but do not remove the USB cable or turn off the phone.

Here is the detail:

• Once you see dialogs like screenshots above; close Nokia Software Updater from Task Manager. You can display Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del or right click the task bar and select Task Manager menu.
• Do NOT remove USB cable from the phone or turn off the phone!
• Restart Nokia Software Updater. It will ask you to reinstall the software on the phone. Press Reinstall button and then press Retry button on the next dialog. If there in an instruction to remove battery and turn on the phone, do NOT do it. I tried it and it didn’t work.

PS: If the instruction above does not work; you may have to find an old computer with Windows XP.

There are so many companies these days that provide automated systems to answer customer calls. They use it to direct the call to the “right” agent or to verify our identity. For example, you may be familiar with voice of a lady saying “Please press 1 for English”, “Please enter your PIN code”, “Please press 0 to speak with our customer representative”, etc.

We can automate our “answer” using dial sequences. Personally, I use this tip to enter my PIN code each time I dial my voice mail number. You can also use this tip for example to dial an extension number automatically.

The following pictures show examples of dial sequences. In this example, I dial number, +12345678, followed by “p” character, which means pause. After that, it enters my PIN number, 1234, followed by “#” sign. The “p character will pause the dial sequence for 1 second. If you find 1 second is not enough, you can enter more “p” characters (as shown in the right picture).

How to enter “p”? You can press * star three times.

The following picture shows how your screen looks like when your device is sending the dial sequences.

Compatible devices: S60 1st, 2nd, 3rd Edition, Nokia Nseries, Nokia Eseries.

This one is a very simple tip but quite useful. Do you know that you can get delivery report from the SMS that you are sending? This way, you will know whether the recipient has received your SMS or not. I found this is very useful feature; but it is disabled by default in most (if not all) S60 devices.

Here is how you can enable SMS delivery report:

• Launch Messaging application.
• Select Options | Settings | Text message menu.
• Set Receive report option to Yes.

Now each time, you sent SMS, you would get a delivery report. You can check the status of your delivery report from Reports folder.

Compatible devices: S60 1st, 2nd, 3rd Edition, Nokia Nseries, Nokia Eseries.