Tips and Tricks for Nokia Phones

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If you have a Nokia phone, you probably want to know all the neat things you can do with it. Along with the tips and tricks, I'll also cover some of the known issues with the phone. This should save you having to ask. Note that some of the tips may apply to other Nokia phones than the models listed. These are simply the models on which I know that the tip applies.

Volume Adjustment in Noisy Environments

Quite a few Nokia models (beyond the two listed above) have a great feature that makes these phone much more useable in noisy environments (such as crowded shopping malls or while walking down a busy street). When the phone detects that you are in an especially noisy area it boosts the volume of the earpiece by upwards of 5 dB (this value is an educated guess). It doesn't even matter if you already have the phoned cranked up to full volume, as the level will still be boosted.

On recent tests I performed with the 6310i, the extent to which this feature worked was amply demonstrated. I stood on the Mavis bridge over Highway 403 in Mississauga during rush hour, which is a pretty noisy place to be. Just to speak with someone standing next to you, it would be necessary to raise your voice to the point of almost shouting. I then called 611 on Fido to listen to the front-end recordings. As many Fido users know, these recordings are not especially loud, and it is even worse in Mississauga, as that area is served by Nortel equipped sites, which are noticeable fainter than the Ericsson sites still found in many other places in Southern Ontario. Despite all that, the phone boosted the volume high enough that I could hear every word spoken without straining to do so.

Can I Change the Volume with Field Test Mode Activated?

At times it appears impossible to change the earpiece volume during a call if Field Test Mode is activated. Unlike the 6190, none of the other 61xx models have volume controls on the side. They instead rely on the cursor up/down buttons on the main keypad. When in Field Test Mode, pressing the up and down buttons merely moves the phone from one screen to another. However, there is a mechanism in the phone to switch it between adjusting the volume and moving through the Field Test screens.

This screwed me up when it first hit me, but I have now figured out how the mechanism works. If you find you cannot adjust the volume in a call with Field Test Mode activated, then do this: press a key, then press and hold the Clear soft key for a second or two. This will toggle the mode back and forth between volume and moving through screens.

2 komentar:

nokiaedition said...

Why does the 6185/6188 Signal Strength Meter Make no Sense?

There are essentially two things that we can display on a signal strength meter. The first is RSSI, which is short for Received Signal Strength Indicator (or something like that). This is a simple measurement of the signal strength with no consideration given to noise or other problems that may plague the signal. For non-CDMA systems this is probably a reasonable measurement, even though noise does play a roll in diminishing the performance of all phones.

In CDMA however, signal strength alone does not necessarily tell us how good the call will be. How many of you have had poor audio using a CDMA phone when it shows a 2 or 3 bar signal? In this case the strong signal did not translate into good audio. Most companies choose to display the more traditional RSSI on their phones, since they obviously believe it makes more sense to the end user.

The second thing we can measure is the Carrier-to-Interference Ratio (or Ec/Io). This measurement essentially ignores the overall strength of the signal and instead concentrates on how much better the desired signal is to the noise that conspires to interfere with it. Nokia chose to use this method for its 61xx CDMA models.

With this in mind, it is therefore possible to observe a low meter reading in an area where you know the signal is strong, and get a high reading in an area where the signal is weak. This doesn't completely explain the weird behavior of the 6185/6188 meter, but I have a possible explanation for the sudden drops to no bars that it makes. When the 6185 changes to a different PN Offset at idle it drops the meter to zero until it can establish the new Ec/Io. I think Nokia will likely "fix" this in the future, while having the meter retain its old reading until the new one can be calculated. This won't give users heart attacks by making them think the signal has disappeared.

So is the use Ec/Io a good idea then? In my opinion: yes and no. The information it provides is far more relevant to the type of call you'll end up with than pure RSSI, but it is foreign to most cell phone users. So on one hand it gives us truly useful signal quality measurements, but at the same time it confuses the hell out of us when we see 2-bar readings while standing next to a cell site. It also fluctuates quite a bit over time, even when the phone remains stationary. I don't know if Nokia will change this in future firmware revisions, but much depends upon the public's overall reaction to this "strange" new idea.

Anonymous said...

Nokia multimedia transfer 1.3B
Per tutti i possessori di cellulari Nokia ecco a voi la beta della versione 1.3 dell'indispensabile tool per la gestione del cellulare.
L'applicazione รจ reperibile al seguente indirizzo: europe nokia

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