One (may be two) of the most popular postings on this blog is about memory card locking. There are many people are asking me how to unlock password-protected memory card. The problem is they never put any password on it; and suddenly their memory cards are locked.

I have written two postings about memory card locking, i.e.:

• How to Unlock Password-protected Memory Card. The idea is to reformat the memory card. It should work most of the time, but you will lose all your data.
• Another Tip For Password-protected Memory Card – on Nokia Eseries devices, when you activate remote lock, it will lock the memory card as well.

Apparently, there are still a few cases where memory card is suddenly locked. My previous colleagues had this problem as well. What is the solution then? Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer if the two tips above don’t work. My colleague tried to call the memory card’s manufacturer. They said that he has to send the memory card back to the manufacturer. I am not sure whether they will replace it with a new one or do "magic" to unlock the card. They also mentioned this case sometimes happen on certain devices.

Anyone has other idea how to unlock memory card?

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.

Update ( 30-May-2008): The latest Nokia Software Updater currently disable support for Windows Vista. So, you won’t be able to use the above tip to update your firmware. The only way to update is use Windows XP.

Update (07-June-2008): Please visit my latest posting to run Nokia Software Updater on Windows Vista. It will allow you to use Windows Vista to update your firmware while waiting the official support from Nokia.

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.

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.

Anyway, on the first day, I had a problem with TV-Out. I connected my device to the TV and surprisingly the output is not as expected. The picture on the TV is black and white and it flickers a lot.

The problem was eventually caused by different television system, i.e. NTSC versus PAL. NTSC is an analog television used in North America, Japan and some Asian countries. PAL is many parts of the world, including many European and Asian countries.

In my case, I have a television that supports NTSC only; while my new N95 comes from Europe where PAL is the default setting. This problem can be easily solved because we can chance the output format of N95?s TV Out. To change it, go to Tools | Settings | General | Enhancement | TV-Out | TV system. Change the setting to the one that matches your television.

There are many television models that support PAL and NTSC system; so you may not need to change anything.

However, some other people still have password on their memory card even though they never set it. Apparently this problem occurs on some phones, mostly happens on Nokia Eseries phones. Thanks to Zahorijs who pointed this out.

How to solve the problem? If, for some reasons, you activate remote lock option on your phone, it will change your memory card’s password too. Just for your information, remote lock option allows you to lock your phone by sending SMS to it. It is a nice feature if you accidentally left your phone somewhere and you don’t want other people using it. You can activate this feature from Tools | Settings | Security | Phone and SIM | Allow remote lock menu. The password of your memory card will be your remote lock message.

So, if you still remember your remote lock message, then try to unlock your memory card’s password using that message.

Hope this tip helps. And please do not post any comments on my previous posting any more. Your question was already answered by Zahorijs as well as this posting.

Compatible devices: S60 3rd Edition, Nokia Eseries.

Some of you may ask, how does Flickr publish this statistics? How does Flickr know which camera model a photo is taken from? The answer to this question is Exif. Here is an explanation of Exif from Wikipedia:

Exchangeable image file format (official abbreviation Exif, not EXIF) is a specification for the image file format used by digital cameras. The specification uses the existing JPEG, TIFF Rev. 6.0, and RIFF WAVE file formats, with the addition of specific metadata tags. It is not supported in JPEG 2000 or PNG.

Basically, Exif is metadata embedded into images captured with digital cameras, including camera phones. Not only camera model, Exif stores many other parameters, such as focal length, exposure time, aperture value and many more.

We can also view Exif information from our PC. There are many photo management software, such as Google’s Picasa, and image viewer software, such as IrfanView (with additional plug-in), that are able to display Exif information. Windows Explorer is able to display Exif information too (just right click the file name and select Properties menu).

The following screenshot shows Exif information from a picture taken with Nokia N73. Just for your information, I use Picasa to display Exif information. You can display Exif information by right click the picture on Picasa and select Properties menu.

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

• Video transcoding using ffmpeg from Oren (S60 Blog). Oren discussed how to convert our videos using Linux command line tool, i.e. ffmpeg. The tool, ffmpeg, is available for Windows too.
• Transcoding Video Files for Your Mobile Phone from Martin Sauter. Martin discussed how to use Media Coder to convert our videos to be played on S60 phones.
• Media Coder Mobile Phone HOWTO from Media Coder Wiki.

I won’t repeat the steps that are already covered by those postings. I just want to share which software and settings that I use to convert my videos. Normally, I am using SUPER from eRightSoft. SUPER is a free transcoding software that supports many popular codecs, including DivX, XviD, MPEG-4, H-263, H-264, MP3, AAC, …. However, I am also using Media Coder in some other cases. The screenshot below shows the settings that I use in my SUPER to convert videos to be played in RealPlayer for S60.

Output container: mp4 (MPEG-4) Output video codecs: MPEG-4

• Video scale size: 320 x 240 (most of the latest S60 phones use QVGA resolution, however double check your phone resolution)
• Frame/sec: 15
• Bit rate (kbps): 336 (you may need to lower the bit rate if your video cannot be displayed smoothly on the phone)

Output audio codecs: AAC

• Sampling rate: 22050
• Channels: 2
• Bit rate (kbps): 56

Compatible devices: S60 2nd Edition FP3, 3rd Edition, Nokia N-Series, Nokia E-Series.

Update (02-May-2007): There is a nice article from SoftwareInReview.com, Improving Video Quality on the Nokia E61 Smartphones.

For S60 1st and 2nd Phones

What should we do if we forget the password? For S60 1st and some of 2nd phones, such as Nokia 3650, Nokia 6600 and Nokia N-Gage, the password is stored in a plain text file.

• Firstly, you need to install FExplorer, a free file manager that allows us to browser through S60 file system.
• Next, launch FExplorer and then browser to c:\system folder. There is a file, called mmcstore.
• Rename the file to mmcstore.txt and then open it. Your password must be several characters at the end of the file.

For S60 3rd Phones, Nokia N-Series and Nokia E-Series

Unfortunately, there is no way to recover the password in the latest S60 phones. The only way that I know so far is by reformatting the memory card. It can be done from Memory Card application by selecting Options | Format memory card menu. Of course, you will lose all your data in the memory card…

If any of you have experience unlocking password of memory card in latest S60 phones, feel free to share it here.

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

Update (27-Mar-07): I have written another posting about password-protected memory card on Another Tip for Password-protected Memory Card. This mostly applies to Nokia Eseries.

8GB Micro-SD

Long time ago, I have posted a blog about how to read IMEI of your device. However, I haven’t discussed how to read IMEI number. IMEI applies to all GSM/3GSM mobile phones, not only S60 phones.

There is a good page at Wikipedia that explains IMEI, such as what kind of information is embedded there:

The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is a number unique to every GSM and UMTS mobile phone. It is usually found printed on the phone underneath the battery and can also be found by dialling the sequence *#06# into the phone.

How to interpret IMEI? The easiest way is by entering your IMEI at numberingplans.com. Here is an example of how the output looks like:

Compatible devices: S60 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Nokia N-Series, Nokia E-Series.