Section 2: So How Do We Do It?
This technique works on most of the nokia models out today. Meaning this will work for you as long as you don’t have an old fossil sort of model. So what you will first do is turn on your phone. Then punch in the code *3001#12345#. This will bring up the NAM programming menu. From here go down and select the option NAM 1. Once you are in the NAM 1 menu, go down until you see “Emergency Numbers”, and enter. You then go down until you see an empty slot and enter the empty slot. Then simply punch in the number that you want to call and exit the NAM programming menu. Now when you dial up the number, the number will be treated as an emergency call number, which will therefore put the phone into emergency call mode (which you can exit out of once you are finished with your call). No number in the emergency call number list is ever billed to you. There are a couple of other things you can do from within the NAM programming menu, but that can be saved for another time, and another tutorial.
Section 3: The Conclusion
Once again I hoped you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this. This trick for the most part only works on the Nokia 60 series, though I believe may also work for a couple of other models. Be sure to also note that this trick also doesn’t work on all networks. Therefore, if you indeed do have a compatible model, first try it with just one or two calls before you start going wild. Then just wait for the bill, and if nothing shows up about the calls you made with this trick, then feel free to call away. Anyways, until next time…
If you have any kind of imagination, you will have taken a look at the classic 1960s Ovalia egg-chair, perhaps during its starring role in Men in Black, and wondered why somebody didn’t make an uglier version, filled with sound-dampening material and speakers, and take a photo of it with full-frontal flash, rendering it even nastier-looking.
Well, good news! Somebody saw inside your twisted mind and actually went and did it. The result is the Sound Egg Chair, incorporating 5.1 surround sound. The $1,500 seat has six pairs of jack sockets on the back so you can trail cables from it like fluid pipes from a Matrix-style person-pod, and it will of course accept sound input of any kind — video games and movies being the main selling points.
It’s actually kind of cool, and we’re sure that when you aren’t illuminating the interior with a camera’s flash bulb it looks as good as Henrik Thor-Larsen’s original. You can even choose the color of the foam inside, as well as the plastic outside. Weirdly, all the foam color options will cost an extra $25, except burgundy, which the makers seem to agree was possibly the worst color ever invented.
At first glance, the Jabra Stone doesn't appear to be anything other than an everyday Bluetooth earpiece, albeit a mildly sleeker-than-usual one. The sleek part hits you when your see that the curve of the earpiece is integrated into the pebble-like charging dock — when they're together, it's like a single unit. Getting the damn thing out of the pebble is kind of a challenge, but the effect is pretty cool.
That pebble is more than a charging dock, though. It's also a battery, capable of holding another four three complete charges for the earpiece. Now when your earpiece runs out of juice, you can just slap it back into the pebble, not bothering to search for the power cable. I've been using a Stone that Jabra dropped off for us last Thursday, and so far I've only needed to actually plug it into a wall outlet once. Nice, but it's got some issues, too.
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For one, those charges don't last super-long. I don't have an exact minute count, but after a couple of long conversations and a little music streaming (the Stone is A2DP-capable), the earpiece would crap out, not even giving me the customary power-loss beep. I've used a lot of Bluetooth earpieces and headphones, and I feel confident saying the battery life — on the earpiece anyway — isn't very good. It's rated at eight hours, but it's not clear if that's counting the four extra charges in the pebble. Regardless, being able to easily carry around the pebble mitigates the problem somewhat.
The design, while sleek, isn't perfect either. The Stone lacks any kind of "boom" extending toward the mouth; instead it opts for a pair of in-line microphones and some noise-reduction algorithms. That makes it tiny (and easy to hide if you have long hair), but it loses one of the benefits of boom mikes — keeping the earpiece stable against your face. Maybe I have big ears (OK, I totally have big ears), but I found that I had to often hang on to the Stone to keep it flying off my face. That the earhook isn't malleable at all doesn't help either. Finally, the shape is fixed, so you can wear it on your right ear only.
The lower part of the earpiece holds the only button, for taking and making calls. You adjust volume by touching the surface and sliding your finger up or down. It all sounds easy… in theory. In practice, the volume controls are a little sluggish, and I couldn't get the button to work the way I wanted. I probably just need more time to get used to the controls, but having real buttons would help, too. I'm just saying.
Call quality was nothing more than typical Bluetooth. My conversation partners always said I sounded further away when talking through the Stone. Using just the phone's mike, my voice was noticeably clearer. It was about the same from my end.
By far the best thing about the Jabra Stone, however, is that it pairs to other Bluetooth devices very easily, as long as they adhere to the Bluetooth 2.1 spec. No codes, no secret moves with the button pushing — just a couple of clicks on your phone and you're done. That's a welcome change from the norm.
Is the convenience enough to make me want to use it? Not so much. Even when you take into account the extra battery life bestowed by the pebble charger, it doesn't really perform better than other earpieces, and the design, while sleek, can be annoying (seriously, getting the thing out of the pebble charger is like an '80s brain teaser). Oh yeah, and it's a whopping $130 — quite a bit more than a lot of cellphones.
The hunt for the best Bluetooth earpiece is still on.
In Japan is it very common to see a tiny child of just 6 or 7 seven years-old taking the train and walking the streets alone, thus the introduction of KDDI's child safety device called the Mamorino is welcome news.
Teaming up with security firm SECOM, the company says the child-friendly mobile phone was designed to prevent kids from being abducted. The unit's GPS system allows parents to keep constant track of their children all while helping to indoctrinate them early into Japan's ubiquitous mobile phone culture.
Via IT Media
The Wall Street Journal published a review of the BlackBerry Storm 2, the sequel to the much-meh'd first version, which came out last year. While we saw some of the virtues of the original Storm's slightly weird way of responding to your fingers, others apparently didn't, and the Storm never went epic.
The Storm 2 apparently fixes this problem, with a revamped touchscreen that provides for "faster, smoother typing." Another welcome feature is Wi-Fi, though the browser is said to be inferior to browsers on the iPhone, Android phones, the Palm Pre — any other smartphone, really. Well that sucks.
The WSJ says to expect the Storm 2 "likely" in November for $200, but we can't say we'll be in line for one. Any BlackBerry users willing to give RIM a second chance on the Storm?
South Korea's LG just rolled out its latest would-be iPhone killer called the LG GD510 aka the Pop. The company calls the phone "the most compact 3-inch full touchscreen phone ever made." In the green tech category, the unit offers an optional solar charging replacement battery cover.
The device also features a 3-megapixel camera, MP3 player, Bluetooth functionality, 8 gigabytes of memory and an FM radio. LG's Pop will go on sale in Europe later this month, with more countries added later. You can see video of the phone's feature set in action here.
Via LG
The Bend phone, designed by Andy Kurovets, hides a few secrets behind its big old touchscreen face. Like a second screen, one that slides up from the back and doubles your screen real estate. Or a camera that pops out of the side. It's mere concept at the moment, and one that looks like a bastardized iPhone, but I think it brings enough new ideas to the table to allow it to stand out from the crowd of imitators and knock-offs.
Pantech has introduced a new player into the somewhat-smartphone arena with the launch of the Pantech Reveal. The handset's most distinctive feature is its double keyboard design: one is a vertical sliding QWERTY keyboard and the other is a normal 10-key number pad for phone calls.
The interfaces can be used simultaneously, and the 3G phone also features an Opera-based web browser, 256 megabytes of internal memory, an FM radio, and a 1.3 megapixel camera. Available as of this week, the phone costs $79.99 with a two-year service agreement with AT&T.
Via Aving
Nokia's Booklet 3G isn't out until November, but that isn't stopping the company from planning a second iteration of its netbook-that-bills-like-a-cellphone, apparently. It usually does: announcing a superior follow-up hot on the heels of the Booklet would only hurt its opening sales.
With that said, details are understandably scarce, so take from this what you will. Taiwan's Economic Daily News newspaper is reporting that Compal, Nokia's manufacturer for the Booklet, is working around the clock to crank out the first generation Booklet and that the company expects to receive orders from Nokia for Booklets in 2010. Whether we just see an incremental upgrade or a wild redesign has yet to be seen.
Well, it looks like Nokia's Booklet 3G must have generated enough excitement if this is true. How about you — does the idea of paying $300 up front for a netbook and then continuing to shell out for monthly costs appeal to you?
Via Electronista
"If you can remember anything about the sixties, then you weren't really there," says Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. Or, like me, you weren't born yet. Still, I can't appreciate a good synthesized diddy — well, we should really just call these blips. The Switched-On ringtones pack by RCP Tones will expand your ringtone options by 75 synthesized sounds using classic hardware. Moog, Korg, Roland, Gleeman — all the big names are there.
The pack itself is $4 off of iTunes or Amazon, and works with iPhones, Blackberries and any MP3-enabled phone. There are also links to some classic synth decks if you want to do some learnin', from the Minimoog to the Roland SH-1000.
RCP Tones, via Design Milk
Finally, Verizon customers might be getting a device to rival AT&Ts iPhone. It's the new Motorola Droid, a new Android 2.0 smartphone with a slide-out keyboard that looks to be pretty great.
It sports a 3.7-inch screen, 16GB of internal storage, a 5-megapixel camera and a Cortex A8 processor making everything run smoothly. It's also the first device to come with Google's new turn-by-turn navigation, which is pretty slick.
It's coming to Verizon on November 6 for $200 with a 2-year contract.
Via Gizmodo
Handling the phone for the last couple of hours, I find Droid's imperfections overwhelmed by Android 2.0 advances that help unify related functions and, first and foremost, its gorgeous screen. More on why the Droid is be best Android yet after the Continue jump.
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At 3.7 inches diagonal, Droid's display is the biggest on a cellphone, yet the Droid is only a hair larger and actually a bit thinner than the CLIQ. Even better, the LCD is 854 x 480 (WVGA) or 400,000 pixels. Most similarly sized screens are 480 x 320. In less tech terms, text and colors are sharper, bolder and crisper than on any other cellphone LCD I've seen.
All Together Now
Droid is more than its screen and slide-out QWERTY keypad. To make non-verbal communications easier, Motorola borrows the contact-centric phonebook from CLIQ's MOTOBLUR social-network interface. Contacts in your phone book include text and email data, but let you compose a message or post to varying your contact's pages on social-networking sites such as Facebook without having to actually boot the Android Facebook app. Droid also handily merges all the info from contacts culled from varying app phonebooks and email contact lists, such as Facebook and Gmail.
Further unifying disparate functions, the home page-based Google Search now scours not only the Web but data on your Droid. For instance, if you do a search on U2, you'll find websites, plus websites you've visited or bookmarked, apps, contacts or, optionally, YouTube and your music. You can change these search options in the settings.
Google Maps now comes with voice-prompted turn-by-turn directions and "layers" — instead of having to choose a normal map view or a traffic view or a satellite view, you can overlay these options on top of each other. You can also share your location with other Google Navigation users for keeping track of your peeps or coordinating arrival at a mutual destination, i.e., "I'm lost, do you see where I am? How do I get to where you are?"
Moto Quibbles
I have some initial complaints. First, the 5MP camera is slow to process the large images. And, despite included image stabilization, indoor shots with the dual LED flash come out blurry if you don't hold the camera stock-still until the shot is processed. Photos also can be geotagged, but oddly this is not the default setting. I'm not even sure why there is an option to begin with — what is the drawback to having all your photos automatically geotagged?
Like the CLIQ, Droid's slide-out horizontal keyboard is three-line rather than four, which means you'll need to tap ALT to access the number keys.
YouTube playback was hinky on my demo unit, especially when I tried to watch videos in HQ. They'd get stuck in "loading" and never actually play. Unlike other Android phones, there isn't a "full screen" zoom option, which means videos that do play play in the middle third of the screen.
But Droid's big, sharp screen makes everything easier to read, Android 2.0 adds the kind of intuitive interface that makes using a complex cellphone easier, Verizon's EV-DO network speeds net surfing, and Droid's solid metallic body fills klutzes with confidence.
Now all we need is an iTunes-like Android client software.
