Apart from being a good business phone, the Nokia N97 is also a superb multimedia phone. Plus, with 32GB worth of in-built storage (expandable upto 48GB), there can be a LOT of multimedia that can be put on this device. The audio quality on the N97 is excellent and on par with many of the personal MP3 players. The music player also has support for equalizers, from which you can use the factory presets or if you’re an audiophile you can create your own preset. Though the inclusion of equalizers is not a surprise at all, it does signal relief to avid music listeners who listen to music according to their frequency levels. For example, being a huge hip-hop fan, I cannot listen to music in anything but the low-frequency region of the frequency response curve and have to switch to ‘Bass Booster’ on the equalizer!

Boost your Bass!

However, with storage expandable up to 48GB, it gets a bit drab just listening to music. As a proud owner of an N97 which boasts a bright screen that supports HD videos in its native resolution of 640X360 you probably realized it to be a good idea to add those high def music videos on board. Now, you can have your songs come to life and besides, this helps in filling your vacant space in the storage department.

Though, after watching the music videos, I would not feel fully satisfied. No, it wasn’t the quality of the video or problems with playback; it was just my wholesome addiction to bass. Now, I know there aren’t any phones –that I know of at least- that add equalizer support for videos, so it would be extra hard to find a solution to this. However, while randomly multi-tasking between a music video and a song, I had my penicillin moment! I will spare you the rest and show you how to trick the N97 into applying equalizer settings. Here’s how:

1. Open the video player and open the video of your choice!
2. Pause that video and open the music player.
3. Play any song from your music player and make sure the equalizer is applied while playing.
4. Pause the song and switch back to the video player.
5. Resume the video and the equalizers present in the music player will be applied to the current video!
6. Enjoy your videos with equalizer!

In words, this looks like a lot, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll enjoy your videos more than ever! It might be a little mult-tasking loophole that Symbian has overlooked, but it provides us with something a lot of other phones can’t: audio equalizers in videos!

I hope this has enhanced your video watching experience and please chime in about your experience with this.

-Salman

Trick: Apply Equalizers to Videos! is a post from: Nokia N97 Blog - News, Help, Apps, Games, Themes, Hacks

Hello all for another review on another great app. Today I’m going to talk about the eBuddy app for Symbian.

Yes yes, there are others such as Nimbuzz and Fring that offer much more functionality such as voice calling and video calling over Skype etc but unfortunately I can’t use these without Wifi – Yes that’s right, I’m with T-Mobile UK which unfortunately block the ports that these apps need.

The only two IM apps I can use are eBuddy and Palringo which are both great but I find that eBuddy just beats Palringo. Both these apps are free from their respective websites so get on down there and check them out, it can’t do any harm (links at the bottom)

With eBuddy you’ll need an eBuddy ID, it’s easy to register, and this ID will hold all the information for all your IM Services. eBuddy allows you to chat through MSN, Facebook, ICQ, AIM, GTalk etc. You can add as many accounts as you require.

A nice feature that I like is “Recent chats” which will tell you all the contacts you often speak to through your IM services. This is a great help when trying to find a certain contact, it’s a bit like a favourites system. You can set your display name, display picture, personal message and you can also have notification sounds/vibration alerts for incoming messages which is great if you plan to leave the app running in the background.

You can do all the usual things such as Nudge and send emoticons to your contacts through the MSN protocol. Another great thing is that there are no in-chat advertisements which are evident in some other Instant Messaging apps out there.

If you would like a review on a certain application, be it free or premium software, then just leave me a comment and I’ll see if I can sort something out.

Thanks for reading and like always, check it out you can’t go wrong for free! Also, remember that if you’re with someone like T-Mobile that block certain required ports for other IM apps then eBuddy or Palringo are perfect!

You can find eBuddy @ http://www.ebuddy.com/mobilebeta/index.php (PC) / http://get.ebuddy.com (Mobile)

- or -

You can find Palringo @ http://www.palringo.com/

Courier not allow IM? Need a new IM app? Look in. is a post from: Nokia N97 Blog - News, Help, Apps, Games, Themes, Hacks

Ever wanted to watch some TV on a train, LIVE? Okay, we’ve got iPlayer for recorded shows (and some Live shows) but we can’t use this over a 3G network but this technique is available over any network fast enough to run it.

You may have heard of this website, but even if you have then you might not know that you can view it on an N97. TVCatchup.com is the website I’m talking about of course – this website streams live UK freeview TV channels over the internet to its (free) registered members. Yes, unfortunately this means that you won’t be able to watch it unless you’re in the UK (Proxy anyone? ).

TVCatchup does not officially support Symbian nor does a Vanilla (out-of-the-box) Symbian phone support it. To watch TV on this site you need to get Skyfire. Now Skyfire is a nice nifty browser that attempts to show all websites in full desktop view glory and it does, most of the time. It’s also very fast at loading pages, much like Opera Mini/Mobile, so I’d recommend installing it even if you see no use at the moment.

With Skyfire you can log into your TVCatchup account and start watching, make sure that if you get redirected to the iPhone version then go back to the homepage and start again or else nothing will work, not even login.

Oh, another thing… Skyfire tends to munch away at a lot of RAM so check out Salman’s post on how to free up as much RAM as possible. I tried to take some screen shots but ScreenSnap kept closing down due to low RAM, this gives you an idea of how much Skyfire uses.

Any way, Let me know how you get on by dropping me a comment below. Thanks.

- Aden Beckitt

PS. I recommend you have an unlimited, or very generous, data plan for doing this over 3G.

How to: Get LIVE TV on your phone! is a post from: Nokia N97 Blog - News, Help, Apps, Games, Themes, Hacks

Have you ever have had your beloved Nokia N97 start to act up and not listen to your commands as quickly as you would like? If you’ve experienced these slow-downs in your phone, then rest assured, you are not alone and there are ways to boost the N97’s energy so it can behave like the premium flagship phone Nokia intends it to be. Though Nokia has released a firmware update that nicely patches up the initial problems these issues still arise due to the low hardware restrictions on the N97. First, we will look at what causes these problems, and then we’ll look at a couple of applications that can solve these problems.

As most of you know the Nokia N97 operates on the Symbian OS and while this is one of the simplest and cleanest operating system, it has some quirks that the Symbian Foundation has failed to address. However, it seems that Symbian has attended to these problems for their future iterations: the Symbian^3 and Symbian^4. Getting back to the S60 operating system, when you open a program it will open up background processes for so the program becomes fully functional. However, when the program is closed it doesn’t fully shut itself off and leaves behind ‘traces’ of itself so that it may load up faster the next time the user opens that certain program. Such programs include: the menu system, messaging, contacts, clock, logs, etc. The N97 also automatically starts these programs in the background when a phone is booted up. Ending these programs will benefit your N97 by making it run smoother, make it less crash-prone (especially while using a demanding app like the internet browser), and preserving battery life. We will show you ways to fully terminate these programs.

Here is how you can maximize performance on your phone:

1. You can restart your phone. This is the simplest way to release all the memory and boost your phone’s performance. However, some shortcuts in life –especially this one- should be avoided as much as possible. Symbian automatically starts the above stated applications in the background and you’ll be back to ground zero as soon as you know it. Also, restarting the phone does no good to your battery life as the startup drains a lot of juice out of the poor thing.
2. Download Handy Taskman. This software by Epocware/Paragon Software comes in real handy (pun definitely intended) in closing those applications running in the background. This serves as a much more power powerful task manager than Symbian’s skeletal Show/Exit task manager. Just click on Optionsà Close All and poof watch the RAM come back from those unused background tasks! Other goodies such as bookmarking fav. Applications is also present. You can evaluate the software for 14 days and buy it ($14.95) after that period. The link is provided below.
   
   

   See what Symbian doesn't want to show you!

3. Download RAMblow. This is a neat new program by CellPhoneSoft. It not only terminates all the unused background applications, but also the unused cached tasks – like the menu tasks. Other features include the MemoryBoost option and an option to schedule automatic clean-ups. You will definitely see a lot of free ram after running this simple application. This application is also available for an evaluation basis of 14 days. If the price of Handy Taskman will set you off, this is an excellent alternative. You may buy it for $4.95. The link is provided below.
   

   Kill RAM, Rambo style!

4. Restart the phone when before charging and run these applications. We know this maybe contradicting the first point, but you’ll soon see the logic in this. Restart your phone before you put it on charge (preferably at night) so you won’t have to worry about battery problems. Once the phone has restarted wait a couple of minutes and then either use RAMblow or Handy Taskman to terminate all the automatic programs that start up (ie, messaging, clock, etc.). Now, you shall have free RAM of no less than 45-55MB on your N97 and this will let your phone run smoother throughout the day!

I hope this was beneficial to you and hopefully your Nokia N97 will be a crash-free device for the rest of its duration with you!

The links for the two programs:

Handy Taskman (Free-to-try, $14.95 afterwards): Website

RAMblow (Free-to-try, $4.95 aftwerwards): Website

*There is also a free alternative called JBTaskman, but it is not recommended because you will have to know exactly what you are doing when using this application. The link, to download it at your own will, is here.

Keep your Nokia N97 running top-notch! is a post from: Nokia N97 Blog - News, Help, Apps, Games, Themes, Hacks

Nokia N97 has a function that allows you to see the map according to your direction, like a compass. You turn on the Nokia Maps and by calibrating the compass you are able to see the map according to your direction just by rotating the Nokia phone. In fact, we rotate to get the idea of what it does while we are moving, inside a car or walking.

Overall it makes your life easier, and becomes a very good GPS. But there’s a few problem, a cool problem, we can say, because you need to shake the Nokia N97 to get the compass calibrated. As it is an electronic compass it needs to be shaked so that it can works properly.

As Nokia indicates, to get the Compass Calibrated you need to:

1. Ensure that the device sensors are on. Select Menu, go to Settings, click  Phone, then Sensor settings and turn Sensors > On.
2. Go to Maps,
3. “Rotate the device around all axes in a continuous movement until the calibration indicator changes its colour to green”. This is what Nokia says and also what comes on the Nokia N97 manual: you must rotate  in an “8″ pattern, or like an “infinitum” pattern.

You can check below in the gallery to calibrate the compass, with images:

Many bloggers, while reviewing the Nokia N97 posted cool videos showing how to calibrate the Compass from Nokia Maps on the Nokia N97. Doing as Nokia said, it can takes minutes, but there are someways to get is in seconds!

How to calibrate in the Nokia way? This is a funny video, lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOkErjFKiD8

And how to calibrate in a special way so that it will takes 3 seconds?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1dP5adHvaU

Maps – How to Calibrate the Compass? is a post from: Nokia N97 Blog - News, Help, Apps, Games, Themes, Hacks

BP-4L Battery- The Nokia N97 battery

Nokia N97 comes with a good battery life, it leasts more than 1 day in the majority of the cases, even using a bit of every applications and remaining some of them open. Nokia N97 is indeed a pocket computer, fast and with a very high battery life. However you have some ways to increase the battery life of your Nokia N97:

1) Fully charge the phone’s battery – This is very important and obvious. When you charge your phone you must left it charging until the bars got the top and stopped moving. Removing it earlier would make damages to the battery. However you don’t need to wait until the phone gets without battery to start charging it. You can charge the battery even if it is almost full and it won’t make any damages, because the Nokia N97 has modern lithium batteries.

2) Turn off the Bluetooth – The Bluetooth eats loads of battery staying turned on, if you won’t need the Bluetooth simply turn off.

Nokia N97 Screen

3) Do not switch the phone off - SmartPhones like Nokia N97 are like computers, by turning on them they use a lot of energy, so, we opt to suspend the PC’s. With smartphones the same thing applies, switching it off and then turning on will consume a lot of battery, you can just block the keyboard (suspend in the computer language), and this way you can even save Nokia N97 battery.

4) Exit unnecessary applications - The only application that I may let turned on during the day is the Nokia E-mail, it runs 24 by 24 hours and this Nokia application consumes a lot of memory if you left the synchronization  turned on, or if the intervals between synchronizations are little. If you want to save memory on your Nokia N97 close unnecessary applications and reduce the e-mail synchronization of your device. Also, don’t use the red button to turn off the application, because it can always run on background, use the “exit” option in the “options” menu.

5) Turn down the Nokia N97’s screen brightness to a lower level, and also set your light-time out to 10 seconds.

6) Use headphones instead of speakers – This way you will consume less battery on the Nokia N97

7) Use 2G instead of 3G - We will talk further about this in one of our next posts. You can do this by going to:

Press the white menu button, select “Settings”, select “Connectivity”, select “Network”, select “Network Mode”, select “GSM”, select “OK”, then press the red button to go back to the front page.

Back Cover of the Nokia N97

Use Offline Mode (the Flight Mode) – If you are listening to music and you won’t use the phone for calls, you can activate this OffLine mode. Most of the Symbian S60 5th edition phones has this function in-built.

To put the 5800 into Offline mode:

On the phone’s front page (aka its standby screen), click on the date at the top of the screen. From the drop-down menu, select “Offline”, then select “Yes” if necessary. The signal bar will turn into an “X” to show that the phone is no longer connected to the phone network, and all other wireless connections will also be broken.

To put the phone back into normal mode:

Click on the front page’s date again and select “General” , then select “Yes” if necessary. (You can also use this menu to select other profiles if you prefer, profiles can be customised by pressing the white menu button, then “Settings”, then “Personal”, then “Profiles”.)

And you, do you have any tip you would like to share with us

Source

8 Tips to Increase Battery Life on the Nokia N97 is a post from: Nokia N97 Blog - News, Help, Apps, Games, Themes, Hacks