Symbian OS

Draft

Definition

Symbian OS is an operating system for cell phones

• Nokia

Tips

N73

N73 are part of the S60 series. Applications written for "S60" should work. Overally speaking Daniel K. Schneider finds Nokia software (e.g. the disfunctional backup of PC Suite) rather crappy, i.e. as buggy as some MS software.

Useful applications on the phone

• Google maps (roughly puts you in the area where you are)
• Torch (if you badly need some light). Requires Python to be installed.
• Autolock (Nokia forgot to add an autolock feature ....)

Useful PC application

• Nokia PC Suite

Firmware updates

A firmupdate will remove all files from your phone memory (including your data likes contacts and messages plus all applications).

• Make sure that you have the installation files for your applications somewhere or that you can find them again on the web.
• Make sure to backup contacts and other important stuff to different locations, e.g.
• the memory card
• external applications

... the PC suite backup feature doesn't necessarily work after an upgrade !!

TIP: Recover contacts from a backup file that won't restore. So you upgraded and you lost all your contacts because the Nokia backup file (*.nbu) restoration doesn't work. Get the Nokia Contact Transfer utility (read Simon Warrick's blog post if you don't trust me). Just click on the *.exe to open the application, the select "PC Suite" on the phone, then hit "copy contacts to phone".

An other solution would be to buy Noki, a third party application that let's you read all the data in a backup file.

Remove unwanted hidden files

If you upgrade your phone, things can go badly wrong, e.g. the phone wants to install an application when boot it. To remove unwanted files do the following. But do not blame me if your phone won't work anymore. This is dangerous !):

1. Write down the file name you see in the application manager, e.g. something like: f0206ba4.sis
2. Connect your phone with mass storage (not the usual PCSuite !). The phone will show as removable device (e.g. drive "F:")
3. Then click on the drive and search for "sis". It will find it somewhere in the "private directory" (at least if you have version 3.0 of S60) Then kill it.
4. Then remove the folder of the same name in the sys/install/sysregistry directory.