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 By Steve Litchfield,
Copyright 2006/2007, All Rights Reserved
With the new '3G' networks now common, your
phone network may have provided you with an older Nokia N70 or one of the
current breed of S60 3rd Edition smartphones, such as the Nokia 3250, N73, N80
or N95. All are top phones of course, but they're also quite a bit more, as I
hope to explain below.
This e-book
is for anyone staring at the many icons on the smartphone screen and wondering
what on earth to do first. Where do you start? I'm also going to cover some
things you'll want to try a bit later, when you feel more confident.
1. Smart? Who's smart?
You'll
notice the title of this short e-book - so what makes your phone 'smart'? After
all, many phones can take photos and play music these days. The difference is
that these Nokia smartphones have something special inside, a computer
processor and grown up software with the power of a small laptop.
Which means
that you can do more than one thing at a time (e.g. being interrupted by a
Calendar alarm while playing music while writing a text message) and that you
can add extra programs to make your phone do more or less anything you want
(e.g. playing games, viewing office documents).
 If you're interested, the 'grown up' software
inside your phone is the Symbian operating system. Think of it as like Windows
on a PC, but designed from the ground up for mobile phones.
 2. Those
buttons
At the
bottom of almost every display on your phone, there are two words, in the
bottom left and bottom right corner. For example, 'Options' and 'Exit', or
'Messaging' and 'Vodafone'. The two words correspond to the two unmarked
buttons either side of your navigator key. In other words, pressing the left
button goes to the function shown in the bottom left, and right goes to that
shown in the bottom right, of course.
 These two buttons'
functions vary all the time, depending on which program you're in and on what
you happen to be doing at the time. Together with the navigator key (which you
can jog left, right, up, down and in), these two function buttons let you do
almost everything you need to do on your smartphone.
If you're
familiar with a PC, you'll know what a menu (of options) is. In a similar way,
when you see 'Options' on your smartphone you can press the corresponding
function button to bring up a menu of things you can do.
3. What's on the Menu?
Your way
into most of the programs on your smartphone is the Menu key, the one with the
 symbol. Press it and you'll see lots of icons. Most of
the program names are obvious (e.g. 'Clock', 'Camera') and you can simply move
to the one you want and press the navigator in. Have a play.
Some of the
icons shown represent 'folders' and opening one of these will show other
programs that have been grouped together in the folder because they share a
theme (e.g. 'Games' or 'Tools').
You may remember we said that one of the
things that made a smartphone smart was that it could do more than one thing at
a time? Press and hold the Menu button and you'll see a little strip of icons
pop up, one for each of the programs currently running on your smartphone. For
example, you might see the game you're in the middle of, or 'Gallery' if you've
been browsing through your images or videos. Use up and down on the navigator
to move the highlight up and down the list, pressing the navigator in to switch
immediately to a particular running program.
4. Read the manual!
It's true
that the manuals for a lot of gadgets (perhaps including your previous mobile
phone) can be safely ignored and left in the box. But don't make this mistake
with your Nokia smartphone. Yes, the interface is very intuitive and you'll be
whizzing around in no time, but as I said above there's the power of a laptop
computer inside and you'll need a little instruction if you want to get to
grips with functions like checking your email and managing your contacts and
calendar.
Nokia's
manual is excellently laid out, with everything mentioned in just the order you
might need it, so keep it handy and (for example) pledge to work through a
chapter a night. Each will take 15 minutes or so to get through, trying
functions as you go, but you'll easily recoup this time later on, by virtue of
being more productive with your smartphone.
If, for any
reason, you haven't got a manual then don't worry because it's 100% certain to
be a quick download (in PDF format) from Nokia's
support site.
 5. Learning to type
If you've
used a mobile phone for anything other than phone calls before, you'll be
familiar with the 'ABC', 'DEF' keys used on your smartphone for text entry. You
may not have seen 'predictive' text entry (also called 'T9') before though.
When typing in a lengthy text message, you'll find that switching on your
smartphone's 'dictionary' speeds things up no end.
To turn on
the dictionary, press the 'Edit'
 key and choose 'Dictionary', then press
navigator right and choose 'On'. With predictive text turned on, you simply hit
each key once, picking out the one that contains the next letter you want, and
the software works out what you're trying to say.
Don't stop
at just the basics of common words though. If you don't want to get frustrated,
it's essential to note a few other text entry basics:
-
The
'Edit'
key brings up a menu that lets you 'Insert a
word' (that's not in the dictionary, such as a common name)
-
The '0'
key is your space bar
-
The '1'
key is your apostrophe – use it for words like I'll, Steve's and
there's
-
If the
predictive text system shows a word that's not what you meant, press the
 key to switch to the next most common
matching word. Once the possibilities are exhausted, the left function button
changes to 'Spell', for you to spell out your desired word using multi-tap
input - it'll be automatically added to the dictionary, too.
-
Press
and hold
to bring up a list of punctuation
characters, e.g. ?, &, =
Just as on your desktop computer, it's
incredibly useful to be able to copy and paste text, to save yourself having to
type in the same thing more than once. To highlight text, press and hold the
'Edit'
key while pressing the navigator right (or
down, etc.) - when all the text required is highlighted, and keeping
held down, press the left function key,
which you'll see has been changed to 'Copy'. To paste this text somewhere else,
position the flashing cursor and press
. One of the functions on the pop-up menu is
'Paste'!
6. Pictures and Memory matters
Even if you
weren't entirely sure what a smartphone was when you were buying, you'll have
gathered by now that your Nokia smartphone has a camera. Not just any camera,
either, its snaps are high enough resolution that you'll never need to take
along a normal 35mm or digital camera ever again. Your Nokia will always be
with you and its photos are excellent as long as you shoot them
in reasonably bright light. You won't be able to appreciate the quality on the
small screen, of course, which brings me to mention ways of getting your photos
out of your smartphone.
  By default, your smartphone will
be saving its pictures to the memory chip deep inside. This can't store a lot
and it's essential to switch to saving photos onto the MMC Mobile, miniSD or
microSD expansion card that comes with your phone. Open the door for the memory
slot and check there's a card inserted now. OK? Now start up your Nokia
smartphone's camera and press 'Options'. Press 'up' three or four times, to get
to 'Settings' on the menu and press the navigator key in. Now highlight 'Image'
or 'Image quality' and press the navigator again.
Make sure
'Image quality' is set to its highest (often labelled 'Print') and that (if
there's a choice) that 'Image resolution' is also set to its highest value
(different generations of Nokia smartphone have slightly different options
here). Scroll down to 'Memory in use' and make sure it's pointing to your
expansion card. Leaving this last setting as 'Phone memory' is wrong and will
result in you filling up your built-in memory chip very fast.
The other
huge reason for storing your high quality photos on expansion card is that you
can pop this out and take it to your nearest photo booth for professional
printing. Do remember to take along the little card adaptor that came with your
phone, as this makes the tiny expansion card big enough to fit into the
standard slot in the booth.
If and when you get round to connecting up
your Nokia smartphone to your family PC, you'll find that it's easy to 'Store'
all your photos on the PC's hard disk, where they can be printed on your
printer or emailed to friends or posted to your family photo blog on the
Internet.
On the CD that came with your
smartphone is Nokia's PC Suite; you need version 6.8 or later, do make sure you
check and grab the latest from Nokia's web site if necessary.
7. Clever contacts
One of your
first actions with your new Nokia will be to get all your favourite contacts
into it: friends, family and so on. If you had their numbers on your old SIM
card in another phone, just insert this into the smartphone and go into
'Contacts' and you'll be asked whether you want these numbers copied across
into your smartphone.
But –
if you're reasonably good with computers and perhaps have even more details
(e.g. people's addresses) in Microsoft Outlook on your PC, why not use PC
Suite, mentioned in the tip above, to copy all of these over to your smartphone
in one fell swoop? Just open up PC Suite window, double click on 'Synchronize'
and follow the prompts.
 8. Who
needs an iPod?
With your
Nokia smartphone, there's really no need to walk around with a Walkman or iPod.
Did you know that your smartphone is capable of holding well over ten CD's
worth of quality stereo music or dozens of separate podcasts? You'll need to
buy a larger expansion card though. You can get a 1GB card for less than
£20 these days (use a
reputable vendor though, avoid
eBay). You might also want a £10 USB card reader for your PC to let
you copy music files onto the expansion card quickly and directly. The stereo
headset supplied with your Nokia will be fine for listening to music. If a call
comes in while a song's playing, you'll be able to answer it with a push on the
button halfway up the hands-free headset.
Your Nokia
smartphone is compatible with any MP3 files already on your hard disk. It may
also work with AAC and WMA files, but this depends on lots of factors, such as
whether there's any copy protection to worry about (for example, if you'd
bought the files from particular online music stores) and which smartphone you
own - very recent ones are more compatible with WMA (Windows Media Audio)
files, such as albums you may gave 'ripped' from CD with Media Player.
How you get your music on
your smartphone is also dependent on the model you own. Many recent Nokia
smartphones are compatible with Windows Media Player, so you can 'Sync to
mobile device' directly. Otherwise your best option is to simply copy the files
directly onto your expansion card, in your card reader. Once on your card, use
'Update music library' on the menu of your smartphone's Music player.
9. Bluetooth
You may not
have heard of this before, but it's worth being aware of as you'll find
Bluetooth very useful whenever you come across someone else with a compatible
phone or smartphone. As a new Nokia smartphone owner, friends can send contact
information to you 'through the air' at distances of up to a few metres. You
can also send photos and video clips backwards and forwards between
handsets.
Bluetooth
will also come in useful if you plan to use a wireless hands-free earpiece (for
example, when driving), just follow the instructions that come with the
earpiece.
10. Getting
online for the first time!
If you
bought your Nokia smartphone with a monthly phone contract then you may be
lucky here as the built-in Settings Wizard may set your smartphone up with the
right Internet settings - just fire up Web and start surfing.
For the rest
of us though, note that by far the easiest way to get all the Internet settings
for your network, country and device is to go to
Nokia's Support web
site and answer the questions - the right settings will be sent as special
text messages to your smartphone and all you've got to do is choose 'Save'.
Don't fiddle around with your Nokia
smartphone's various Internet 'access point' settings. Under the hood, they're
more complicated than you ever need to know! If Nokia's Support site service
doesn't work for you then call your network provider's help
line.
 11.
Satellite navigation and the world
One of the
things that really makes your smartphone 'smart' is that it can run add-on
programs. One of the most sophisticated types of add-on is navigation software,
such as Nokia's free Maps service, also known as
Smart2go. Using a Bluetooth-compatible
GPS on your car dashboard or in your pocket, run this program on your
smartphone and you'll be able to see exactly where you are, almost anywhere in
the world, for free, and Smart2go will plan you a route from your current
position to anywhere else.
Once you
have a large expansion card inserted and are feeling confident, you might also
like to investigate other programs for your smartphone, many of which are also
completely free. These range from document readers to instant chat applications
to addictive games. The world really is your oyster now that you own an S60
smartphone.
For a full list of freeware
for your Nokia smartphone, see 3lib.ukonline.co.uk/nonagss60.htm.
For a more
general catalogue of software, see www.my-symbian.com or
www.allaboutsymbian.com
Now, pay attention if you have a smartphone
running S60 3rd Edition. In case you're not sure, that's the Nokia E61, E70,
E60, E50, N80, 3250, N73 or N93 (plus a few others). The '3rd Edition' bit is
important because, partly in a huge drive to increase security and avoid
problems with so-called 'malware', S60 3rd Edition and Symbian OS 9, the
software inside the devices I just mentioned, have been radically upgraded and
applications written for S60 2nd Edition (e.g. for the Nokia 6630, 6680 and
N70) simply won't work as-is. Instead, make sure to check that you only
download and install applications specifically stated as being S60 3rd Edition
compatible.
 12. A few reassurances over security on your smartphone
As a relative newcomer to Nokia smartphones, you may be
worried about 'viruses' and 'firewalls', especially with some of the scare
stories thrown up by the media. Don't be. You have absolutely nothing to fear
and there's absolutely no need for any security software of any kind of Symbian
OS-based smartphone. In fact, if you install any 'anti-virus' or 'firewall'
software, the only effect will be to slow down your device and prevent software
from working at full speed.
For starters, there's no such thing as a 'virus' for S60,
as there's no way for malicious software to spread invisibly from
one device to another. If a malevolent program does try and contact your phone
(and trust me, this is more unlikely than you winning the lottery) by Bluetooth
or through an MMS message, you'll get several warnings and questions about
installation. Unless it's something you were expecting, just say 'No'.
Similarly with firewall software. You'll need this on your
PC or Macintosh, of course, but Symbian OS, powering your smartphone, leaves no
'ports' open for malicious software to attack. Again, don't worry.
The most likely way for your smartphone to get 'infected'
is by you being silly enough to go looking for 'warez' software and unwittingly
install a 'trojan', a program that's not what it claims to be. But you wouldn't
be that silly... would you?
I hope this little e-book has helped you. If you would like to say thank you,
please drop me an email at [email protected] and
consider transferring a small amount to me by PayPal at the same address,
perhaps using the button below.  |
