Nokia 5500 Sport

2007-09-01

Phone for harsh environments

(It still seems to have everything though)

It was time, time for an update! My old lg kg320 had played out its part and it was now time to find a replacement. A replacement that could deliver the basic functionality now lacking in my old workhorse. If one may call it that when I almost never got to use it - not much of a social life you see. And since calls are so rare in my life I have come to value them immensely. Making the need for a new mobile phone immediate.

A small fact of life that has always annoyed me is the illogical way in which mobile phones are dispersed among the populous. The smallest phones tend to end up with the technology-savvy mobile enthusiast while the larger clunkier models find their way to the casual users. The casual user who may not use their mobile phone very often, but rather wants it for availability, should opt for the smaller phone since it would be less obtrusive. While the enthusiast should be the one who ends up with the larger phone. Larger meaning room for more features.

I, at any rate, ended up getting the "Nokia 5500 Sport". Admittedly it was not my first choice (the new Nokia e90 communicator looked pretty good to me) but as it turns out fancy, posh and perfect phones don't do well in grease-laden industrial environments, not at all unlike my own workplace. And so I felt the need to revise my plans slightly. A tougher more rugged phone seemed advisable...

In this new "gem" of mine, a couple of features stood out:

TTS - STT

Text To Speech and Speech To Text. The ability to have a computer-generated voice read me my text-messages never ceases to make me happy. I take every chance I can get to fire up my own HAL 2000 and marvel at the current state of technology. And "yes" I am easily amused ;^)

The device automatically makes a voice-record of all of your contacts. Press down the right "soft-button" for a second and a half, say the name of the contact you wish to call and the phone will dial their default number. This feature also extends to a few of the applications, like the voice-recorder and bluetooth manager. One can also add other applications manually.

Tapping

Once set up one can easily play, pause, skip forwards and backwards by tapping the phone with your fingers. Two taps on the bottom of the phone pauses playing music or plays paused music, while tapping the right side of the phone skips to the next tune, tapping the left side skips back.

Tapping the phone within 30 seconds of receiving an SMS makes the TTS-system read the message for you. When in sports mode; tapping makes the TTS tell you what your current training statistics are.

3d-accelerometer

Through which a flurry of applications are derived. The 5500 Sport has the ability, by virtue of being angled at active people, of functioning as a workout tool. After entering your own personal data like height and weight etc. the built in pedometer will calculate how many calories you burn while "power walking" to work every day. A feature more likely to be used is the Groove game. The game consists of a maze through which the gamer would angle the phone to navigate a steel ball. I found the game seriously addictive and along with the new 3d rendition of the Snake game (Snakes) I have all I am going to need for a long time.

Operating System

The phone uses Symbian 60 3rd edition. I have already downloaded oggplay that enables me to play my ogg-files and a small horde of apps that might come in handy one day, including putty for ssh.

Gmail Works!

The phone supports SSL which makes it possible to check your gmail account. My old phone did have a mail-client but lacked TLS/SSL.

The Browser

is Nokias own xhtml-browser. And it is EXCELLENT! It is definitely better than ie6 at rendering web pages and it will do css. If the page is larger than the screen, as it always is, a thumbnail overlay will appear to show you where your at. click at the picture above for an example.

Wrapping up

All things said I am very happy with my choice of mobile phone, except for these "few" points.

Connecting the phone to computer over USB

My desktop computer summarily refused to mount the telephone as a usb mass storage device. I use Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) as my desktop. The solution? format the card! After formatting the MicroSD-card in the phone it was found by the mounting software. Now it all works.

The awkward placement of the menu-button

I'm constantly tricking myself into pushing the contacts soft button. Silly me! but everything else works so nicely I just had to say something about this.

Battery life

If one uses all of the phones features; e-mail, mp3-player (or oggplayer - oggplay), play a few games and browse the web your battery won't last for more than a day! Summa sumarum it's all good and well having all this functionality - as long as you don't use them, the price to pay for the size of the phone I gather.)

The ad-45 hands-free adapter?

The hands-free adapter that was included in my box, namely ad-45, is a bit short on perfection. The cable is so short; that I have to carry the phone in the belt-clip.

No software cd included!

Normally this is not a problem for me. I generally never use the included cd but since all of the software is PREinstalled on the accompanying 64MB microsd-card (not nearly big enough) it would be nice to have access to the cd. Moving installed programs from the old card over to my new 2GB card could prove a bit tricky.

If all of the software-packs were available online then I would side with Nokia and consider the cd superflous but... They aren't!

The End!

Now kinda working for IE6

2007-08-11

Phew! IE 6 Support...

F inally! Now my little site "works" with the archaic headache-generating browser a.k.a Internet Explorer 6! It doesn't work perfectly but at least a basic level of functionality is has been reached.

Now the site works with every big boy browser out there.

• Firefox 2
• Konqueror 3.5.6
• Epiphany 2.18.1
• Internet Exporer 7
• Internet Explorer 6 (GA-AAH-RGH!)
• Links 1.00pre12 (fairly ok)
• Lynx 2.8.5rel.1 (fairly ok)
• Opera 9.22
• Safari 3 beta

I had to download Opera for linux to check out how this page would look in that browser, and to my surprise it worked well! They had packages for Ubuntu Efty/Fiesty, but only for the i386 architecture though. This was easily circumvented by forcing it on to the system:

As long as you have the apropriate 32bit-libraries - it should work.

add header info

2006-12-10

What is this blogging thing about?

I have wondered for some time now what a blog is. A web-blog is of course an online journal that the author updates fairly often.

Even though I have designed my own site in a similar fashion, I can't (for propriety's sake) really call it a blog. It's more of a.. "bloggish" personal site.

live at sticky fingers

2007-05-04

brAnd Live!

Last Friday (4th of may) brAnd played live on stage at Sticky Fingers in Gothenburg.

Although the condition I was in (mildly refreshed), might have skewed my perception of reality slightly, I have been told that I had the time of my life.

The gig was the culmination of a singing course in which the performance was a part of the learning experience. After the two song set the band was coaxed back for an encore, although highly irregular they were granted permission for this and performed a third song.

The music was excellent despite useless sound gear. An ear-"treat"...

newborn

2006-12-10

Julia Daniella Davis

On the 10th of December 2006 the newest addition to our family was born. Julia came into the world in the normal fashion. At 18:21 swedish time it was all over.

• Weight: 2360 g
• Height: 45 cm

Right now she's harrasing her mother every other hour to revel in milk... She is gaining in weight.

Didn't work out

2006-11-15

Or not...

The excursion to the land of the living didn't work out. My financial funding backed out. And I'm back on the job.

Now I'm forced to live vicariously through this website and by reading tech news.

To the breach once more?

2006-10-08

Avancez!

It has been a while since my last posting - the main reason for this is the fact that I don't have any readers... A natural consequence of not putting anything useful on the web ;-)

Lately I have been busy with what is called a "Tekniskt Basår" ( lit. Technical base-year) at Chalmers University of Technology. In a way have partly accomplished one of the goals set for myself in my CV. But I still have a long, long way to go, though!

brAnd - new single

2006-06-06

A brAnd new single

On the 8th of May the incredible new duo "brAnd" released their first single. The song entitled "Take The Stand" was written by Alex Brage and Niclas Bergstrand to rally support for using products certified with the fair trade symbol. The use of these products ensure that the workers who produce them are treated fairly. brAnd joins in with the fair trade movement to do their part. Guess how you could do your part? Try checking this song out - for a start.

brAnd's (myspace) website

new acquisition

2006-11-26

The Razer Krait

Today I bought the Razer Krait infrared, high-resolution (1600dpi) mouse. And I like it. It is not the best thing out there - but for me it is the perfect choice. It has a modest price

A while back I had some trouble with the wireless/useless Fujitsu-Siemens keyboard/mouse kombo that was included with the computer. It developed a nasty habit of picking up the keystrokes of a neighbours wireless keyboard! I was minding my own webily buisiness as usual when suddenly someone typed "Red Dragon" into an input field of a webpage! unless the wireless reciever had suddenly developed some sort of preemptive mindreading capability, it would be an understatement to say that this was a problem.

I spoke to with the company that I am leasing the computer from and they sent me a new wireless keyboard/mouse combo (same brand, though) and believe it or not but the very same thing happened again! Only - this time the same "someone" was searching for "borat".

After hitting the ceiling a couple of times I set out to get myself some wiremore periferals. Mouse-wise I stumbled across the Razer Krait (named after some snake I presume) for a measly 350 SEK. Being the last of the highend infrared gaming mice it will serve my purposes nicely. All I need is a good mouse plain and simple.

I'm using it under ubuntu dapper drake (6.06 LTS) and it workes fine. Bear in mind that you probably have to tweak your mouse-settings in gnome slightly.

For a simple person like me this mouse seems to be perfect. There are only three buttons left, right and middle/scroll (being a modest gameplayer, that's all I need). I you're an advanced gamer you would problably rather be looking at the newer 2000dpi laser mice that are available but if all you're looking for is "a good mouse" this one ought to do nicely.

Darkness prevails

2005-12-19

Tragedy!

My shrimp is dead.

At about 20:00 Swedish time my dear shrimp passed away :-( During a purging of snails from the aquarium, the shrimp met with a sudden and violent death when a enormous humanoid foot brutally invaded its personal space.

Somehow the shrimp had managed to get out of the aquarium and, through some incredible efforts of gargantuan proportions, had crawled one meter into the living-room - where it met its unfortunate fate.

After a brief goodbye-ceremony the remainders of the dear pet was lovingly wrapped in toilet paper and respectfully flushed down the toilet.

(Som vanligt är det inte den faktiska räkan på bilden som har dött.)

Personal System Log

2005-12-19

System Log - star date...

This is my personal system-log. In this file a have tried to incorporate everything that has ever been a problem on my systems and and the manner in which I solved the problems.

This information is primarily here so that I can access it myself but, of course, anyone who finds it useful is welcome to use it. Keep in mind that unless you are running some variant of Linux this will probably not help you very much.

My System Log