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!