Gone...

This will be the last post here.

I've got a new phone, and, after many years i've left Sony Ericsson.

I've got a lovely new HTC Touch Pro now, and you can read about it at my new blog: HTC Touch Pro Blog

New internet browser for UIQ - Ozone

Spotted on another blog, i've just downloaded and installed the alpha of "Ozone".
This is another new browser for UIQ. Given that the built in one sometimes seems pretty clunky I have given this a try and I'll post back when I've had a proper play with it.

For now, the main features are:

* Touch screen control
* Zooming and panning by finger
* Multiple windows
* Pop-up blocking
* Auto-comple URL editing
* Desktop/mobile mode switch
* Netscape scriptable plugin
* HTML5 client-side database support

And more: high performance disk caching, fast image decoding, favorite icons, bookmark management and advanced HTML, CSS and JavaScript (SquirrelFish) support.


Sounds good? You can find it here

Sony Ericsson announce Xperia X1 release date

Today, Sony Ericsson have announced the release date for their forthcoming Windows Mobile based handset, the Xperia X1.

On first glance this looks promising - we'll have to wait and see if their interface design is any good or not though.

Announcement details here: Xperia X1 Release Date

And the official page for the handset is here: Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

Wall-e theme now available for P1!

My latest P1i theme, based around Pixar's Wall-E character is now available. Featuring wall-e himself, and Eve, this blue-based theme has a clean design, and even features the Buy N Large logo for the "back" button!

Visit the site now, and download your FREE wall-e mobile phone theme!

New theme on it's way!

I'm working on a new theme, this time based on Wall-e, the loveable robot from Pixars new film of the same title.


Initially it'll be a UIQ theme for the P1, but if I get a few requests for a specific handset I might create a theme accordingly. So post a comment and let me know!

It's still a work in progress, but keep your eye on the puffle website so when it's finished you can get your FREE wall-e mobile phone theme!

New FREE P1i Theme uploaded!

I've uploaded a new theme to the puffle site. This one is titled "GreenLeaf" and has a nice spring/summer feel to it. Visit the Free mobile phone themes page at puffle and try it now!

Walkman 3 player on the P1

The UIQ Evangelist has reported that the Walkman 3 player is now able to be put onto the P1 thanks to the hard work of some very clever folk.

I won't repeat the isntructions here, as there are already some decent tutorials out there - first off, you need to download the files that make up the Walkman player: Walkman 3 files. Next, you need to enable access to the system files on the phone. This requires you to install Python on to your PC along with the Sony Ericsson smartphone suite. Links to both, and an excellent tutorial on the process are here: UIQ 3 hacking page.

Once you've enabled access on the phone, copy the walkman files to the memory card (I just created a folder within "Other", then use Swiss Manager to copy the four folders to the C: drive on the phone. It prompts to overwrite the folders - jsut say yes, as you're actually adding new files, not overwriting existing ones. Once done, reboot the phone, and the Walkman player is in the application list (I made a shortcut on the desktop to it, replacing the one I had for the built in music player).

So what does the new player offer? Functionality wise, not much... it will organise music a little better into artist/album and so on, and you can also tab albums or individual songs with "moods". This means when you're "happy" you can get it just to play through all your happy songs! The best part though is the visualisations. The screens flow nicely from one to another with some transitions, and the backgrounds are animated with items flying across behind the actual text and information. Search YouTube for some videos showing this.

All in all, a recommended mod - you don't junk the existing player so it's fairly safe to do, although bear in mind you are putting files into the system folders on the phone so take care to follow all the instructions carefully. Enjoy!

"Sony Style" font

You may recall that we learned how to change the font on the P1i (and other UIQ phones) by duplicating the font files on the M2 card.

Well, this post on Esato has a link to download a Sony Ericsson style font that looks great, as you can see in the picture.

You'll need to rename the files to:

Sans-Serif_Latin-Regular.ttf
Sans-Serif_Latin-Bold.ttf
Sans-Serif_Latin-Italic.ttf
Sans-Serif_Latin-BoldItalic.ttf

Then drop them into \Resource\Fonts on the memory stick. Enjoy!

New Google Maps available

A new UIQ specific version of Google Maps is avaialable. Get it by browsing to www.google.com/gmm on your phone.
It's pretty neat, scrolling and zooming around the map using the touchscreen works very well, and if you don't have a GPS, it will actually locate you to within a couple of kilometres by triangualting your position from cellphone masts! Very clever.

Browse your network from the P1i

I'm currently trying out SymSMB from Telexy - it's currently a beta release, but looks promising so far.
SymSMB is designed to allow you to browse your network from the phone, and copy/move/delete files.

From the main menu you start by going in to "Control Panel". In here, you can create user accounts (if your network shares are not open to all and sundry) and then create a new "Connection". This effectively maps a drive letter within SymSMB to the machine\share you specify, using the user account you choose, via the connection you choose. So, I have a J: drive that maps via my home WLAN to my home computers C$ share, and a T: drive that does the same at work to my laptop. The new beta seems pretty stable - I copied a whole MP3'd album to the phone via wireless (the first release just froze trying to copy one small file for some reason!)

I haven't yet tried accessing stuff via a gprs/3g connection and VPN, and I also haven't tried the reverse option - browsing the phone from a computer on the network, but it's certainly an app worth keeping an eye on.

New theme...

Hi,

I've just uploaded a new theme for the P1i to the puffle site.

Visit free sony ericsson themes and scroll to the bottom - it's called "The Grid".

I'd be interested if any P990/W960 owners could try it and tell me what's missing, not sure if there is a "catch-all" UTZ format?

I'm also working on a new ZSBLIB with new battery/signal meters and so on. This will be designed to fit in with the grid scheme but will of course work separately. I'll upload that once I've finished it!

Change the font on your P1!

I recently came across this post on Esato, and thought I'd give it a try on my P1 - pleased to say it works!

The basic steps are:
- Put your M2 card in to a PC, and create a folder called "resource". Within that, create a folder called "fonts".

- Find the font you want to use (I suggest this site for free fonts) Note that for best results you should find one that has 4 types available - regular, bold, italic and bolditalic).

-Rename the font files to these names:

Sans-Serif_Latin-Regular.ttf
Sans-Serif_Latin-Bold.ttf
Sans-Serif_Latin-Italic.ttf
Sans-Serif_Latin-BoldItalic.ttf

-Copy them into the fonts folder you created on the M2 card, and reboot the phone - new fonts!

I have made a seperate fonts folder on the memory card with a subfolder for each named font, and the 4 files within it, the plan being I can copy them from there to the d:\resource\fonts folder and reboot to try a different one without needing the PC. You'll need to use something like x-plore for this though, as the resource folder will be a system one. Note that this won't work with newer windows fonts as they have a .ttc extension and are a different type...

If you find any fonts that work well - leave a comment!

Replacement file manager - x-plore

I've just installed x-plore from Lonely Cat Games.
This is a replacement file manager for symbian devices. Initial impressions seem good; I just used it to delete a load of files from a folder on my phone by simply dragging the stylus down the side of them to "tick" them all in one go. The font used is also very small which I like personally as you can fit a lot more on the screen.
The main view is a tree view, similar to Windows Explorer for instance, which makes it very easy to navigate around. You can do the usual file operations (move, copy, delete, open) and also some great sounding extra features I have yet to try, such as packing files into a .zip (or opening), viewing Word documents, viewing system folders on the phone (o/s dependant) and more. The featurelist from their site is as follows:

• View all drives / folders / files on phone in tree view *
• Integrated text and image viewer
• View file details
• Edit file attriutes (hidder, read-only, etc)
• Rename and delete files
• Create or edit text files
• Create folders
• Multi-selection
• Copy or move files and folders
• Send files by Bluetooth or Infrared
• Extract files from Zip, Rar, Jar archives
• Pack files to Zip archive
• View Word documents
• Hardware device info
• View processes and tasks **
• Built-in program update
• Viewing, saving files in Messaging folders
• Hex viewer and editor
• Search files
• Folder hotkeys

The full version is $9.50 which isn't bad (in the UK, that equates to under a fiver) so I'll continue to play around with it and update the trial once I'm happy.

HCH-72 Car holder installed

One of the reasons I went for the P1 over some of the other new SE Phones is that I can put TomTom on it. The next job of course was fitting the phone in the car!
I've had some "universal" windscreen mounts in the past, and they are okay but I decided I'd rather have the phone a bit closer to me due to the smaller screen. Also, I wanted to get away from cables draped all over the car interior.
So, I got the HCH-72 Car holder. This is designed specifically for the P1, and has a socket on the bottom to connect a car charger to.

Unfortunately the HCH-72 doesn't come supplied with any sort of mount apart from screw holes on the back, but there wasn't anywhere suitable on my dashboard to put it. I got a strip of aluminium, then cut/bent it as needed so that the HCH-72 now sits in the right place in the car. The bracket is screwed to the upper inside face of the instrument binnacle, so the screw holes won't be too visible when I eventually remove the bracket. It seems pretty sturdy although I have yet to road-test it! The next job is to route power to it neatly rather than having the charging cable stretching up to it...

New Icons

Our dev team recently purchase an massive library of Icons - I've taken a few choice ones onto my P1i to replace the standard Sony Ericsson icons, and some of the app ones (such as using a little car for TomTom etc!)

New firmware available

Sony Ericsson have released a firmware update for the P1i. Currently it is only available for Generic World 1 phones it seems (although you can change the CDA of your phone to this using XS++ ()).

The new fw is R9J005 - R6F38

When I restored my backup, it didn't restore 3rd party apps though, so the likes of TomTom, ScummVM and WorldMate all needed re-installing. Not sure if that's normal or not!

First P1i theme online!

I've just uploaded my first P1 theme to the website. Titled "Black Glass" it's a nice dark theme that I think suits the phone well. Visit the Free Sony Ericsson Themes page at puffle (http://www.puffle.co.uk/k750.php) and check it out. I'd love to hear any comments!

Google Maps

If you visit the usual link for google maps mobile version (www.google.com/gmm) you'll get a java version that runs on "normal" handsets. This is fine, but there is a nicer version for Symbian that runs full-screen on the P1i. To get it, simply open the P1's web browser and point to www.google.fr/gmm (the French site) and it will ask to install it.
Have fun!

Theme designing for Symbian

Some readers may have seen my previously created themes for the K750, W800 and W810 Sony Ericsson handsets (and if not, check them out - Free Sony Ericsson themes) so of course I am now looking at designing some themes for my new P1i.

The first thing I have discovered is that there is quite a lot more to it- you can now design the individual checkboxes, radio buttons and so on, but these images aren't simple static ones; rather they are multi-bitmaps, so for instance to define a checkbox, your bitmap will actually have to be a 3x4 grid with 12 checkbox images for various states (ticked, unavailable and so on). I think I'm getting there, but SE's theme creator doesn't really give much of a hint other than the image size - NOTHING on the layout! Thansk guys...

Doing some hunting, I found a couple of sites that give a pretty good definition and some examples: UIQ.Com PDF document and UIQ Wiki theme page.

Unfortunately, both the above still seem to lack some of the elements the P1 seems to ask for, but my first theme is almost done and will be available here and on the Puffle website soon!

Vodafone Internet access sorted.

Generally for my internet access I have always used the Internet APN for GPRS on previous phones. When I first set up the P1i for access though, it seemed to be using the Vodafone wap access point - pages were being reformatted into shorter ones with 'next'/'previous' type buttons, the email service wouldn't connect and quite a few websites refused to load.
I've since discovered that the "Address" field in the Internet Connection properties also acts as an APN field, so by simply entering the address "internet", I'm now using the correct APN and everything works! Hurrah!