Hi Guys. I bought a nokia N70 last week. Funny enough I had it switched on and playing with it while it was charging without the sim card. During this time I was able to enable disable active standby. Unfortunatly as soon as I put my sim in this feature went missing. I phone 3 support and they said it has been dissabled by the service provider. My problem is they are refusing to let me have that feture and how in the world did they manager to dissable it as soon as I had the sim in the phone.

My N70 is through 3 network Australia and I must admit I was very worried about how much they would have changed the O.S. but was relieved when the speed and buggy issues related to carrier firmware didnt eventuate. I have found that by changing the quick keys the phone responds better and by managing the menu I get better response in the apps than when i first started using it.

The third-party Apps for this phone have grown substantially since it’s release and all I can say is that it makes for a better phone. Opera will make browsing superior than the standard one and email support for me via my carrier has been fast and well supported. Just about any attachment my friends send me opens and can be viewed onscreen. Makes for a surprising change when people send me animated funnies and i can watch them….I have recieved a few powerpoint funnies which viewed extremely well.

All in all I think this phone will easily please the technophobes and business people alike. After reading many reviews and post’s on this phone I would have to say that most peoples gripes are that it isnt a PDA as such…..IMHO I dont think it was meant to be……Phones as we know it are getting closer to this mark and I wonder how long it will be before we dont really have phones and we adopt smaller lighter versions of actual PDA’s with phone capability built right in…. need I say “power pocket pc’s”

At the moment you have to go to a Nokia Service Centre (Choice Communications in town for Cork people) and get them to do it and they keep your phone for 3 hours and they zap all the settings (and they return it with the same firmware!).

I annoyed them so much they told me I needed to go to a “Level 3 Service Centre” if I wanted an MCU upgrade. I can only find one of them in Ireland via Google somewhere in the west. I despair!

I have to keep re-setting the clock on the phone as it jumps forward a minute or two a week (which might not sound like a lot but it adds up very quickly.

Conor - the rev on my phone is v2.0539.1.2. Is it not possible to download and install the firmware? I know I used to do that with my old Siemens phone.

The latest firmware supposedly fixes a raft of problems (see http://www.symbian-freak.com/quides/firmware/logs/n70_new_firmware.htm).

I tried getting it updated to that v5.x from the current v2.x but it came back from Choice Comms on the quays with exactly the same version as it went in. The guy said that the system would only let him have v2.x. If you or nayone manages to get upgraded, let me know and I’ll go in too. What does *#0000# say on your phone?

The N70 handbook says you can activate active standby and post shortcuts across the normal “desktop”.

I follow the instructions Tools > Settings > Phone > Standbymode > Active standby,and lo and behold, I don’t have a setting for Active standby!

Any ideas?

Cheers

It looks like the N70 also supports Python like my 6680 does (http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-announce-list/2005-October/004415.html)

I have moved some of the options around and it certainly helps me get around the phone more quickly.

Btw, my Mac starts up faster than the phone!

Peter would you ping me when the update comes out in case I miss it? Thanks.

just on the loss of coverage issue, perhaps there is choppy 3G coverage around Cork so if you change the settings on the phone to only use the 2.5G network, the phone won’t drop the calls when switching from network to network. You could give it a try and see if it makes any difference. You can change it in Tools>Settings>Network>Network Mode, change it from dual to single mode.

Finally.. regarding the startup time; If you consider just how powerful the phone is (it is essentially a handheld computer) you could forgive the startup time. How long does it take for a mac or a pc to startup?

Russell’s S60 Menu Tips

With regard to the delay on opening messages, I’m betting “messages” is assigned to the left soft key? If so, the delay is there so that when you want to keylock the phone(left softkey followed by *), it doesn’t always open the message application when you do so. If you assign the right softkey the messaging app, it will open straight away. You can assign something that you don’t use quite as much(or one you’re willing to accept the lag with) to the left key.

With regard to so many key presses to do anything; I’ve found that there really are only a few tasks I do on a very regular basis and I have them all assigned to the standby screen. you can assign 5 actions or applications to the standby screen. Add the 2 softkeys to make 7 which is usually enough.

Then, you can arrange the applications in the menu to suit you. It really speeds up your use of the phone if you take time to arrange your apps and folders in the best way for you. Russell Beattie wrote a nice piece on arranging apps on S60 phones which I’d say you’ll find interesting: