The Artesea

When I was a councillor on Lincoln City a total of three applications for phone masts came in front of the Planning Committee.
Due to a prejudicial interest I never took part in the discussion however I was pleased to see that the councillors understood the laws around the applications. Two of the applications were accepted without much fuss.
The third was from O2 at the Birchwood shopping centre. It was a retrospective for a 13 metre poll with 3g aerials on top. They had already got consent (via appeal) for a 13 metre poll with 2g on top, but put up a 3g mast instead (only real difference was an extra 10cm in diameter of the bit at the top). It was felt by the committee that the overall shape of the structure was detrimental to the visual amenity of the area, however the planning inspectorate appeal again overturned the committee.

Edit: 11/12/2008 The BBC have annouced that the X1 is now supported, however it won’t run over Vodafone at the mo.

Since the BBC launched the iPlayer for the N96 I knew it wouldn’t be too long until it would be available for other phones. However I can’t wait, so spent today looking for methods in getting my X1 to stream the shows.
I managed to extract the RTSP stream of Buzzcocks and successfully got that working on my phone. My next step was to find a way that didn’t involve me using my PC opening a collection of random XML files in order, to then email a link to my phone.

Several hours of coding and I managed to strip out the opening the files on the PC to a simple web script, however I still needed the 8 letter/number code for the episode to be parsed to the page.
Then when looking at the BBC source I noticed something. They now support the Samsung I900 a Windows Mobile device.
The method for checking if your phone is a Samsung, a simple User-Agent check.

Knowing how to modify the User-Agent in Opera on my X1 I placed the code need to pass the check and BINGO my phone now loads the BBC page and plays the shows.

These are the steps for an X1i Vodafone UK Branded
Run Opera
In the address bar enter opera:config (no http://)
Scroll down to User Prefs and click
Scroll down to Custom User-Agent and at the end of the pre-filled text add sgh-i900
Scroll down some more and press Save. You will get a prompt which suggests you may need to reset the phone, but for this you don’t.

Now point your browser to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/ and enjoy.

If on your phone the Custom User-Agent is blank, try visiting something like whatsmyuseragent.com copying the User-Agent which your phone is currently displaying and then add sgh-i900 to the end.

WARNING: Please only use whilst on WIFI. I accept no responsibility for you running up HUGE bills due to large data downloads. Even if you have an “unlimited” add-on, check with your network for their Fair Usage (Vodafone’s is 500mb) as you can quickly exceed it watching TV on your mobile!

The quality isn’t exactly great on a WVGA screen as it’s been built for the Nokia N96. According to beebhack these are the specs.

Access Method: RTSP streaming
Video Codec: H.264
Video Resolution: 320 x 176
Video Bitrate: 128 kbps
Audio Codec: AAC
Audio Bitrate: 64 kbps
Overall Bitrate: 192 kbps

ps if you get a BBC 502 error, don’t worry. Looks like they are playing about with the site themselves. Just try again later.

…sort of. The BBC have launched Sideloading in which you can now download programmes from the iPlayer in a lower res format to copy across to your phone or video playing handheld device.
The current restrictions are that your mobile must play DRM Windows Media files and that the downloads take place on a Windows PC.
This looks like another great bit of progress for the iPlayer project, just need to get myself a new phone which will play the files now.

I’ve just managed to test mobiPad with a W960. The software allows button presses on the Wiimote to be sent to the phone via Bluetooth.
Having it run in the background with Picodrive allows me to play Micro Machines. The quality of the emulator is brilliant and the response time from the wiimote is fast.
Just need to look at some of the other emu’s now.

After my successful debrand your phone for about a £5 (33,618 hits, 104 comments) and then unbrand your mobile for free (11,680 hits, 161 comments) posts. I now bring you the easiest way to de-brand your phone for free.
No more looking for files in folders which are about 41 bytes, no more trying to get the Box.com to download the files, no more running SEUS fifteen times, just 8 simple steps.

But before I begin, here are the usual disclaimers:

Whilst I have successfully converted several Vodafone W960i into unbranded ones, I can’t guarantee that the same will happen to you. If you’re not 100% confident then DON’T do it. All actions are taken at your own risk! Yada yada ya…
There seem to be some issues with the M600, please read the comments first and then judge for yourself if you want to go ahead!

The things you will need to successfully remove the network customisations from your phone are:

• A UIQ3 phone (W960i, P1i, P990i, M600i, W950i)

• XS++ 3.1 (mirror)
• Sony Ericsson Update Service
• Sony Ericsson Data Cable (should have come in the box)
• A computer running Windows XP (Vista may work)

1. Perform a back-up of your phone via the PC Suite (or however you prefer), as you are going to wipe all of the phones C drive.
2. Run the Sony Ericsson Update Service (SEUS), click on the icons matching your phone, when prompted pull the battery out and put it back in, when prompted plug the cable into your phone whilst holding down C (this is either the letter C on the keyboard, the Cancel button or even the @ internet button). Once it’s found your phone it’ll will either prompt you to update the firmware or inform you that you have the latest. Either way, quit SEUS without doing anything else. (This will force your PC to find the drivers required for your phone)
3. Run XS++, click on the SMARTPHONE CONNECT box, and press Connect. The box on the left will tell you what to do, but it’ll be similar to step 2.
   
4. Once connected you now need to select the new CDA for your phone:
   W960 – CDA 162032/1
   P1 – CDA 162022/1
   P990 – CDA 162007/1
   M600 – CDA 162011/1
   W950 – CDA 162014/1
   and hit Run Script. (They all have GW1 in the script name, however you can choose any of the others, but I recommend the Generic World 1 scripts)
   
5. You can now close XS++, I recommend that you don’t touch anything else in XS++!
6. Now run SEUS again, this time do the update on your phone.
7. Boot up your phone to the Sony Ericsson or Walkman startup screens. Goodbye Vodafone, Orange or o2
8. Restore the backup of your phone

See wasn’t that easy.

As before, feel free to put questions in the comment box.

And if you feel like it you can always send a donation via PayPal

Our old broadband seems to have been finally cut off, so it looks like I’m going to be without for nearly a month whilst we wait for TalkTalk to set us up. I can get my phone to act as a modem (and if I’m luckly I can steal Heather’s which has HSPDA), but please be patient if you have any LibDemBlogs/LibDemVoice technical requirements.

Last year I started using Google Calendar to manage my few events which I had. The only problem was that it was almost impossible to update whilst on the move. However Google XHTML’d the site and shrank it down a bit and allowed you to view it on you’re phone’s browser. But I was still missing the key bit. The entries weren’t appearing in my in-built calendar. I started to look into the Google Calendar API, and found it a nightmare. There were so many different methods depending if the event was all-day, just for an hour or repeating every year, so I gave up. However recently I’ve discovered GooSync, they allow your Google Calendar to talk over SyncML. This means that any events I add to the phone are added to Google and vice-versa. The free service allows 30 days of events to be sync’d with your main calendar. The premium version gives you a full year, plus the ability to sync extra calendars including those “shared” calendars. This means that I now have the full Arsenal fixture list on my phone, which is helpfully updated after each cup draw and ammended why Sky change the kick off time. It should work on almost any phone that was launched in the last two years and I would recommend you trying it, even if it’s the free version.

Wandering past the Orange Shop this lunch time I saw this in the window, an advert for the Motorola F3. A pay-as-go phone which costs only £10. But something didn’t seem right, so I took a photo. On the left is the photo, on the right is the offical press photo direct from Motorola.

Well the image on the left has a nice orange tree on the screen, yet the one on the right looks like a digital calculator. Maybe the press image is showing the screensaver, but no that is the actuall display. It’s the main reason why the phone is only £10! You can read more about the phone here on GSMArena.

Recently it was discovered that you can customise some of the icons on your P990 / M600 or W950 (and I’m guessing the P1 and W960).

The trick involves having files with the same file names in the same location on your memory card as on your Z rom drive. This trick is identical to the one with Fonts.
From the picture on the left, you can see that I’ve changed the bottom status bar icons.

The first steps are to use Swiss Manager Pro or X-plore to copy the original files in the Z:\resource\ folder to your memory card. Then using the USB cable and file transfer mode, or a memory card reader, dump them on your PC.
The files which you can edit are the MBM files. These are multiple bitmaps files which can be opened and created with MBMTool.
In MBMTool open one of the files, then highlight all the numbers in the left and select “Copy image(s) to directory”. In the directory you give, you will now find a collection of BMP files. Using your favourite image editing tool you can change the picture.
Back in MBMTool, delete the old picture and then click on “Add image(s) to list”. Select the file you’ve changed. You will need to ensure with the green arrows at the bottom, that the file is in the same place as the original. Finally highlight the file and press “Change color” and select Color 16bpp.
The next tricky bit is creating a mask file. This will be the black and white file that is similar to the image you’ve just replaced (normally +1 in the file name). Every pixel which is black makes the image transparent, every pixel which is white will show the solid colour of your icon. Any grey colour in between will be a mix of the background and the image. Again as before in MBMTool delete the old mask file, replace with the new mask file and this time “Change color” to Monochrome 8bpp.
Repeat for every icon you want to change and then Save your file (you may need to change the properities of the file to stop it being from Read-Only).

The final step is to copy the file structure onto your memory stick, so you have something like
D:\resource\ZSBLIB\ZSBLIB.mbm

Now reboot your phone and enjoy your icons.

If everything goes wrong, just delete the files from your Memory Stick and everything should return to normal.

I’ve created some packs below in which there is a new signal status bar, duracell battery icon, the arrow on the left has turned into the Sony Ericsson logo, the Task Manager icon on the right is now a nice yellow star, the Wifi icon is a more visable red colour, mute looks like the one from Windows XP and the 3G icon actually makes sense.

For those who want my icons, try these two ZIP files. First has the MBM files, the second the BMPs.

Jan 2008 Update – A new EASIER way to flash your phone for FREE, which also works for the W960 and the P1.

WARNING: Doing this could brick your phone!
Whilst I have successfully converted a Vodafone M600i into an unbranded Australian, there are several reports of it not working and phone being broken. All actions are taken at your own risk!

Following on from my most sucessful blog post ever, we now have a method to debrand your UIQ3 phone for free.
No more Vodafone or Orange customisation!

However this method is slightly more complicated than using KulanKendiClient, so if you’re not too sure for only €6 KulanKendiClient is still worthwhile.

As per anything which involves changing the phones firmware any action you take on your phone is completely your own choice. If you’re not 100% confident then DON’T do it. I would recommend that you read the comments for opinions from other users before starting.

1. Perform a back-up of your phone via the PC Suite (or however you prefer)
2. Run the Sony Ericsson Update Service (SEUS) and update the firmware of your phone. Even if you have the latest firmware DO THIS! You’ll need to Continue anyway and confirm mulitple times.
3. Download the patch file for your phone from here.
   For the P990 use P990_CDA162007/1_R9F011_Generic_World_1.rar, for the M600 use M600_CDA-162011/1_R9F011_Generic_World_1.zip and for the W950 try W950_CDA-162014/1_R9F011_Generic_World_1.rar
4. Unzip / Unrar these files on to your Desktop (or any temp folder)
5. Here’s the tricky bit. Open c:\Program Files\Sony Ericsson\Update Service\db\13740270\ and make a backup of the blob_fs folder.
6. Now open the blob_fs folder and sort by file size. Right near the bottom you should have a file sized about 353 bytes (if you hover over the 1kb files a tooltip window will give the exact size). Right click this and select Rename, now hold Ctrl and press C (copy).
7. On your Desktop find the file you unzipped which is about 353 bytes. Right click and select Rename, now hold Ctrl and press V (paste).
8. Repeat for the file which is about 413 bytes.
9. Now drag the two files from your Desktop in to the c:\Program Files\Sony Ericsson\Update Service\db\13740270\blob_fs\ folder, and press Yes to overwriting the files.
10. Re-flash your phone with SEUS, pressing Yes everytime you are asked “Are you sure?”. This will now rewrite the CDA of your phone.
11. Turn your phone on, press next through all the setup screens, then pull the battery out.
12. Now for a final time re-flash your phone again with SEUS. This will now download the Generic firmware for your phone and install it.
13. Turn your phone back on again and enjoy the debranded menus

Pictures:
Before

During

After

Please leave comments below if you get this to work, as I would like to see how well it’s if works. Also if you are having problems please let me know which phone you have and if you leave an email address I can reply to you directly.