Nokia 808 glass and touch digitizer replacement

This is my damaged Nokia 808. Bella dropped it from 1m height, on a wooden floor. Glass broke, but sceen and touch were intact. I glued screen protection sticker on it, to re-inforce screen a bit and prevent cuts while using it for couple of weeks, while figuring out my repair options.

Authorized repair quoted me 200 EUR for the job of replacing both glass and display together and said, that, according to Nokia manual, it is impossible (or prohibited) to dismantle lcd/glass assembly. There is however a separate glass part available from ebay seller “easyworldwidetrading” (also ewwt-au, ewwtnet, ewwt-oz), for mere 20 EUR (price delivered to Europe). I ordered slightly more expensive kit (25 EUR), which included 2 plastic separation tools, and 2 smallish screwdrivers (one of the Torx T5). In my case, those tools weren’t much help. Moreover, one needs Torx T6 instead, to disassemble Nokia 808. I had to buy it separately at the last moment at the local DIY hypermarket. So, if I had to do it again, I would buy a cheaper kit, without tools. NB! Screen is identical to Nokia’s orginial part, but there is small mark on the upper front lip saying “proto.nokia.com”. This will give away that you tempered with device, and will most probably void warranty.

There are 2 videos available on youtube, from LE55ONS. First, explains how to take out LCD+glass assembly out.

2nd video explains how to separate LCD from glass/digitizer.

After this, you still need to separate glass from the carrying plastic frame, and there is no video on youtube to guide you. This operation is quite messy and time consuming, but you can do it too, just don’t rush and give yourself plenty of time. I never repaired phones before, and doing this first time took about 2 hours for disassebmly and 1 hour to glue parts and put everything back together.

LAST REMINDER, this is messy, fragile, risky. You may damage underlying AMOLED display and of course, even if successful, it voids manufacturer’s warranty.

This is how I thought I would proceed.

But despite continuosly heating the screen and frame, I could not separate it from the frame. The problem was when trying to separate glass from frame, separation tools would go in-between glass and digitizer (both glued to each other as well).

After half and hour of trying around edges, I went for more aggressive approach and ran separator between glass and digitizer. (continue heating).

Notice, how this credit card goes between 2 glass surfaces. By the way, sharpened edge of the old credit card, is all the tool you will need. Well, maybe 2 cards. Be careful with the frame. Breaking glass is ok at this point, breaking the frame is not.

This is what I had after separating the upper glass from the frame. Digitizer screen is very fragile, broken easily. However, new replacement part comes with the new digitizer.

Now, I cleaned the frame from the remaining glass and glue.

Result. Frame (backside) separated from front glass, digitizer in pieces.

Frame (front).

I used simple rubbery adhesive glue, the one that needs to dry for couple of minutes before pressing both surfaces. You could use a superfast and super strong glue too, but if you ever need to repeat this procedure, only rubber glue would allow it. I had to work quickly and carefully, with a narrow screwdriver, to apply very thin layer of glue around the digitizer’s position on the frame, to avoid any glue going between glass and AMOLED display, when parts are pressed strongly to each other. Did not have time to make photos, as glue was drying rapidly. Keep protective pads on both sides of the glass.

Then, I connected all electrical parts and powered the phone up. It worked. (including touch)

Went back to AMOLED and glass. Used dry cloth on amoled, then used vacuum cleaner to suck all dust from amoled, (repeat couple of times) then removed protective film from digitizer and clicked amoled and glass together. Powered all electronics on again, checked that there is no dust between glass and display, no traces of glue, etc. Finally, assembled the phone.

Before and After. Good luck if you try this yourself.

Nokia Phone Switch app on Nokia 808 PureView, Nokia Belle FP2

This is something I was surprised to find. Switch app does not appear in the menu, but if you press search button (on the homescreen menu) and search for “switch”, one of the results will be “Phone Switch App”.

Or just find it under Phone-> Settings->Connectivity->Data transfer->Phone Switch

Motorola XT720 photo quality vs Samsung i8910

I use both phones in parallel during the trip to Crimea, Ukraine, and even took some comparative shots.

Only XT720 photos

Notice in the left side of the photos below, this is my finger. Happens to often with XT720, due to placement of the camera on the very edge of the phone, too close to the point, where you naturally keep your fingers.

Using flash in the poorly lit museum, during daytime. No nighttime pics yet.

Motorola XT720 on the left, Samsung Omnia i8910 on the right

My overall verdict stays the same, photo quality of XT720 is quite average, hopefully this will change in the next firmwares.

Google Maps for Symbian update, Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2

Google Maps 3.3 now supports syncing of Nokia Landmarks and Google Maps favourites between handset and the mighty google cloud. Looks like another nail into the coffin of Nokia Maps?

Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 for symbian has got Opera Sync and Download manager, but the sweetest thing comes from the fixes to memory management and rendering speed. It was quick on Omnia HD i8910, and it is (subjectively) twice faster now.

i8910 as real Samsung flagship in 2009

Today comes confirmation from Eldar Murtazin (russian language), the mobile industry analyst and avid phone reviewer, that sales of Samsung Omnia HD i8910 have overtaken sales of Nokia N97 in Russia. Despite the fact that N97’s advertising budget is 3 mUSD and Omnia’s only 300 kUSD.

More than ever, I am happy with my choice of the phone this year. i8910 is good.

Custom ROMs for symbian devices?

 

As far as I knowб this is the first custom ROM (similarly to custom ROMs for WinMo devices, made popular by xda-developers) for Symbian phones. This one is adaptation of HK Rom for Italian languages, plus some customizations, and Kastor effects enabled out of the box.

Btw, I have Omnia HD i8910 since middle of July, enjoy its speed and capacious RAM. New firmwares are coming out of Samsung soon to enable 3d task manager and to fix some bugs. This thing rocks. I also hope to see it updated to Symbian^2 next year. We’ll see. :)

How to download youtube video to S60 phone

(tested on Nokia N82)

How to download youtube video to your S60 phone?

I recently was presented with the challenge – I’ve received link to an interesting music video in twitter (I use and recommend Gravity). I could watch it using Operamini or native S60 browser, but downloading it to my phone was a pain. Commonly used sites (like ssyoutube.com, or youtubemp4.com) that help desktop users to download youtube clips, failed to work properly in the phone browsers (and I tried native browser, operamini, o3zone). Sometime they used ajax to show links, sometime they asked you to right click on the link to save file (how the hell can one do this on non-touch Nokia?) The only way that I found to ahieve the desired result, was to use keepvid.com which present simple download links in the resulting page.

If you already know ID of the video that you want to download, then it is pretty easy task, just form the following address in your favourite browser http://keepvid.com/?url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID follow it, and press on of the download links (.flv or .mp4). If, you want to get HQ quality, add &fmt=18 to the end of the url.

Now the 2nd obstacle is to get ID of the specific video from tinyurl (or any other link compressor, I guess). If you open tinyurl in your browser, it goes to mobile youtube page. Save bookmark at this moment and open it for editing. Surprisingly, I could not open bookmark address for editing in operamini (probably a bug related to very long address). But it works in the native browser, where you can see VideoID at the end of the address (the XXXXXXX after v= ). Copy it.

Now you can form download url as discussed above, adding to VideoID to

http://keepvid.com/?url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=

You also can save this address among bookmarks for easier use next time.

Now, I am looking for a way to extract audio track from .mp4 video on my phone and making a ringtone out of it. :)

Time to upgrade? Nokia N82 firmware v31

I have been using v20 for  a long time since it was easily unlocked. But my phone recently started to behave erratically, I could not start media gallery anymore. Camera was slow. Everything was slow and it rebooted by itself too often (couple of times a week). I also have 16GB MicroSDHC card and I knew that latest firmware touted better compatibility with large cards. So it was time to go with full format of the phone and the memory card and painfull reinstallation of all programs.

So, here we go. Backup of PIM. Copying of files from card to computer. (that was not easy, the card wouldn’t read in card readers anymore, but using the phone in USB mode, did it). Format the card. *#7370# for hard reset.

I used Nokia Software Updater, and it did it evil thing by upgrading me to v31 and loosing my regional languages in the process. There I was, having now choice between English and Hindu. Instead of Latvian and Russian. Luckily, this isn’t a rare problem. It happens often, because the phone is produced for one country, and has that country’s product code and regional languages are added before shipping only.

This is fixed by changing phones product code to correct region and doing NSU again. Luckily it is easy and free (with caveats about understanding the risks of messing with Nokia firmware using non-Nokia tools). I used guidelines for N95 product code change from thenokiablog and it worked for my N82 too.

Format the card. Hard reset. Format the card again. (just in case, you know).

Here I am now. The phone is much faster even with all the software installed.(I relate it to better support for the large cards). It eats less energy (true, as promised in firmware changelog). It is more stable. (true, not self-initiated reboots anymore). And yes, there are some problems with Opera Mini 4.2 as noted by other users(for me, it manifests in slow response when using My Opera sync). Because of the this, I hope that there is another firmware on the way.

It is not unlocked anymore. Huh. There is a way to do it (mapdrive method) discussed in great detail in many places on the web. But you need to have your own certificate to sign several programs required in the process and I do not have one. It seems that at this moment, our friends in China stopped creating such certificates. Boy, do I want to be in the line when there is a new place creating personal certificates.

S60 client for bruteforcing WPA

Now, that there are tools that can bruteforce WPA passwords in reasonable time using Nvidia GPU accelerated computing, I hope someone comes up with the S60 client for sniffing and geotagging target network, then uploading it to a server, where it will be broken and password given back to requester, as well as put on the map for community to see it. 

This way, if you find a protected network in a popular place and want to connect, you’ll get a password the next day, or, if it was already broken by somebody else request, you’ll get password immediately.

It may look as “dreaming out loud”, but there is nothing to prevent it from happening tomorrow.

Speed test of Sandisk 16GB MicroSDHC (Class 2) with Nokia N82

 

From http://www.thenokiaguide.com/my_weblog/2008/10/a-first-look-at.html

The most important point here is to understand that Class 2/4/6 do not really matter when choosing card for N82, because internal write speed of the latest N-series (with possible exception of N96) is below 1 MB/sec, i.e. below even Class 2 speeds.

1st OpenCoffee meeting in Riga, tomorrow evening

UPDATE!!! Sunset bar is still under reconstruction. New meeting place will be announced today. Stay tuned.

First OpenCoffee in Riga, will take place in Sunset Bar, at 18:00. This is open discussion about Web 2.0 issues, challenges and ideas. It is also a great opportunity to get acquainted with local Web 2.0 crowd. I unfortunately cannot participate this time, but hope to see it online, thanks to Dik who will translate tomorrow meeting using his Nokia N82 and Qik. Link to translation is here. Also embedded into this post below.

N-Gage 2 protection broken

I normally do not care to write about warez, but this is a new milestone in S60 world of gaming. N Gage 2 game protection have been compromised. More info in Russian is here with Asphalt 3D as an example. I did not have time to try it myself yet, but users report that it is working. Not clear if online and multiplayer features work, but I guess they should be, since crack only affect game itself, and works under unmodified N-Gage2 platform.

SVG themes crash Nokia N82 browser?

I have learned to my surprise, that N82 was unstable in web browsing, just after installation of couple of programs and my "favourite" theme. Browser would often close for no apparent reason, more often when in "menu" mode. All of this despite tons of free RAM, etc. So, I started to roll back installed programs until I found a culprit. This was something I would expect the last - a theme! It is hard to believe, I thought that a theme is just a collection of pics and colour definitions, but it seems that SVG theme from PiZero, can cause such a strange instability in N82 browser (in my case that was New Gold SVG theme by PiZero). I doubt it has anything to do with theme itself, more likely some bug in SVG theme rendering engine in firmware.

Removed the theme and my browser is stable again.

My new Nokia N82 Black and iPhone Google Reader

I waited for several months for the black version of N82 to become available and this Monday I finally got one. I am delighted with it. Build quality is superb, despite of what people commented on silver version. Firmware is mature, and there is ton of free RAM to run a dozen of apps at the same time. It is quick too. I usually keep open 2 gmail apps, fring, palringo,and several tabs in browser (google reader, etc.) Today I received a call, and while speaking via bluetooth headset, I opened google maps and checked satellite view of the location that was discussed. All of it without a hitch. It worked really well with my home WiFi connection in parallel with GSM call and bluetooth headset.

Keyboard is a treat too, surprisingly so.

I will not comment on excellent photo and video quality, because many people have done it already. Suffice it to say, that this is the first truly multimedia and multitasking computer from Nokia in the smallest form factor and at affordable pricepoint. Prices have dropped from 600 EUR on launch to 350 EUR now. Way to go, Nokia.

Autorotation is good for comfortable photo viewing. Youtube playback over Wifi connection is perfect.

Coreplayer 1.2 plays anything you can throw at it. Now I only need a 16 or 32 GB card to hold my media.

GPS easily picks up inside my flat, something even my SIRF3 bluetooth module couldn't deliver.

This is also a device that finally can run QuickOffice smoothly and I even splashed on buying 5th version with Office 2007 support.

And finally, S60 browser has enough memory to shine opening several heavy tabs at once.Which leads me to the last point for today - it works really well on iPhone version of Google Reader, making it so easy to follow my feeds. I attached some screenshots of this. Now, you can view post summaries within the same window, and if needed it opens full posts in new tab. I abandoned Opera now. But if the Opera 9.x for S60 will deliver promised improvements, then this phone will replace my Everun UMPC for 99% of my mobile computing needs.

Thank you, Nokia. This is a great device. Now, that my cigar is starting to burn my fingers and cognac glass is empty, I will finish this post, written on Nokia N82, and will go inside. Good night.

Nokia N82 Black finally coming to Latvia

This phone has been available in neighboring Sweden for some 3 weeks and in Russia for some 2 weeks already, but not in Latvia yet.

Called BM.lv, expected availability one week. Will check others tomorrow.

Easter egg from Eldar Murtazin, N95 touch

In the review of Sony-Ericsson G700 that appeared today on the main page of mobile-review (russian version), among the shots made by its camera is one that eerily resemble current flagman N95 with new Symbian Touch interface. 

Full hires photo here

UPDATE: Fake. Mobile-Review took this picture from the laptop screen, when watching pilot series of Knightriders. Product placement by Nokia. Interface picture is also different from the demo of Symbian Touch given on MWC 2008.

Simplest and free navigation in Moscow

 

The easiest and totally free way to navigate in Moscow is using Yandex Maps. Application is available for WM, Symbian, UIQ and java phones. It is similar to Nokia Maps, you can download map fragments on the go, via GPRS. I used it during my last visit to Moscow and found that it has the best detalization compared to Nokia or TomTom maps. And if you choose to connect via GPRS and update your location data, you will get access to traffic situation too. However, until now there was a catch22 - the people who needs such navigation most, would be ones not willing to use it due to sky-high prices of data roaming. I personally, used Russian SIM for that trip, but it is not something easy to do for a foreigner, or anybody on a short visit. Now, this problem is solved for smartphones (read not for Java phones), because now you can download full Moscow map (60MB streets or 183MB steets+satellite) availablefrom Yandex Mobile Maps website

 

and put it into predefined directory on your phone. Disclaimer! I have not done it yet, but will try soon.

P.S. While at it, provided you get a local SIM, it is also the easiest way to navigate most other largest Russian/Ukrainian cities, currently, 15 cities available: Москвa, Санкт-Петербург, Киев, Екатеринбург, Краснодар, Нижний Новгород, Новосибирск, Одесса, Орел, Ростов, Рязань, Самара, Тула, Уфа, Челябинск, Татарстан, Крым.

Google Maps enables MyLocation in Latvia

Do not know when this happened, the MyLocation feature of Google Maps, that guesstimates approximate location of the user without use of GPS, but rather, relying on cellular tower location database, is active now. I think I tried it couple of months ago, and it was not active at that time. Now, it still is pretty rough. But it is good for learning locations of nearest cell towers of your operator. After checking my location 3 times, within different rooms of my flat, I learned that I am located between 3 cells and my location indicator will show different points on the map for each room. Nice. Certainly not good for a phone battery life when handset is forced to switch between different cells, trying to find one, which is not as bad as the current one.

Mobile browser wars in 2008 - Opera Mobile 9.65, Iris, Skyfire and Netfront 3.5

The PC Magazine takes a look on the latest squad of mobile browsers - Iris, Skyfire, NetFront 3.5 and Opera Mobile 9.5. Some quotes from review:

Iris - We installed a copy of Iris on a Sprint MOTO Q9c (which runs Windows Mobile 6 Standard) and were treated to a bare bones, flaky browsing experience. We doubled the zoom and entered full screen mode, only to find no way out; dropping to the home screen and re-entering the browser caused it to crash. Interestingly, while it handed full-blown desktop sites just fine, it stumbled on WAP sites.

Netfront - a high-resolution browser for, strangely, older Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC devices like the Dell Axim x51v. The new version includes vague usability improvements such as improved stylus accuracy, "first-draw time" and zooming speed, but it's hard to get excited over something that doesn't run on current smartphones. (The company suspended general Windows Mobile development back with version 3.3.)

Skyfire - appears to live up to its billing as the most PC Web-like mobile browser. It supports a wide range of rich media content including dynamic Flash 9, AJAX, Java, audio, and streaming video including QuickTime – much of this one-ups even Safari on the iPhone. The browser also supports zooming, full-screen view, and multiple page thumbnails.

Opera - significantly pumps up the existing Opera Mobile 8.6 browser. You can now zoom in and out of Web pages, looking at a zoomed-out overview to decide what part of the page you want to focus on. UI is sleeker,with attractive, gray menus and a full-screen mode where the menus disappear completely. Most powerfully, though, Opera Mobile 9.5 supports Web widgets, which are little applications developed in AJAX and HTML. Opera Mobile is still missing one major Web standard - Adobe Flash, which Skyfire supports.  Opera is exploring licensing Flash themselves to include it directly in the browser.

My Worst Mobile Experience :(

Surprisingly enough, I can easily identify my worst mobile experience and unfortunately, it is same for all mobile devices that I ever worked with.

On all devices from Sony Ericsson, Nokia, HP and Raon (and actually all other laptops I used, mostly Lenovo Thinkpads) Bluetooth stack just crashes after some period of use. It takes longer on some devices, or considerably less on others, but anyway, Bluetooth inevitably crashes leading to the need to restart, reboot, sometimes even take out a battery from a frozen device.

Pocket PCs before WM5 were notorios for lack of system drivers memory, and after half a dozen of BT On/Off cycles, BT drivers would fail to load to memory.

Sony Ericsson phones would hang if phone call came during BT connection (file transmission, dialup, syncing)

Nokia handles well under load, but after several cycles of using it with Everun as dialup modem, there comes a moment when it stops connecting to UMPC, until rebooted.

Raon, just as any other XP or Vista computer, doesn't handle well going through several cycles of sleep or hibernation and guess what, at some moment when you need to get online, BT either doesn't start, or connects but doesn't load anything from the phone.

It is my biggest disappointment, that despite being a very old technology, BT stack implementation still remains buggy across various manufacturers. One day I will switch to built in HSDPA or WiMax just because of this.