Archive for April 2007
What’s Up, UMTS?
27 April 2007 in Phones & Root | Comments (0)
After reading about problems with Sonera’s 3G (=UMTS) network in the Helsinki area, I’ve started getting problems with Saunalahti’s (aka. Elisa) UMTS network in Vaasa as of recently.
It is quite strange this time around, though. People can’t really call me - all right, they can try to call me but they get all kinds of strange error messages or I ”never answer” to their call.
Well, I can’t answer if the phone ain’t ringing, can I? 
The problem seems to be in the network and not the phone. It is the only reasonable conclusion I can make for when I today went into a store, where they apparently have a GSM repeater, the phone made the switch to GSM as UMTS probably doesn’t have great reception without a repeater there.
Quite soon after the phone went GSM, a phone call came in. Apparently, the caller had tried calling me several times but without any success until now.
I’ve seen this behavior before, but the other way around, I couldn’t call nor send SMS to anyone when I was connected to the UMTS network. Switching to GSM made it all work again. That was the result of a malfunctioning UTMS antenna on the network operator’s behalf, or so they told me. 
So, I think I’ll be running on the GSM network for the moment and leave the trials and misbehaviours of the UMTS network alone for a few weeks time… 
(Yes, I’ve sent a report to Saunalahti, but they can take some time to answer to their emails. Large organization and all that makes email answering take some time, I think.)
Nickel Oh Nickel
25 April 2007 in Phones | Comments (0)
Apparently, cell phone manufacturers are not aware of the problem that nickel was andstill is, since I’ve started to notice that the nice looking metal covered phones contain nickel. The first one was a quite popular one over at the North American continent: the Motorola RAZR. The keypad (and perhaps other parts of the phone as well) contains som enickel magnesium alloy. I wonder how many people with nickel allergies were surprised to see that coming, and I would like to know how many more got allergic to nickel. 
Well, seems like Nokia decided to join the nickel party with their 6300 phone. A sweet looking phone that I was considering buying as a gift for a relative, but after doing a Google search for ”nokia 6300 nickel” I don’t think so anymore. The search returned a link to the user’s manual where there’s an very appropriate warning:
Warning: The Navi key (4) in this device may contain nickel. It is not designed for prolonged contact with the skin. Continious exposure to nickel on the skin may lead to nickel allergy.
Nice to see that warning in the user’s manual, but why doesn’t the specifications mention the nickel problem. And don’t Nokia know of what materials the phones are made of anymore. “May contain nickel.” 
Of what I can recall, nickel has been (almost completely) abolished from being sold in clocks, clothing and jewlery (including those nasty looking piercing things) in Finland, but this prohibitation doesn’t seem to concern phones currently.
I’m so glad that my N91 is made of aluminum and does not belong to the ”may contain nickel“ group. :)
Certificate for University of Vaasa’s E-Mail Server
11 April 2007 in How-To & Phones & Root & Security | Comments (0)
If you, like me, have a Nokia phone (or any other phone or mail program for that matter) and want to use the automatic pull mail feature for getting the e-mail from your University of Vaasa account, then here is the certificate that you will need. Unless you have this certificate installed, you will recieve a certificate error message on the server mail.uwasa.fi everytime you connect to the server because the UoV’s computer center have used their own self-signed certificate on that server.
Download: mail.uwasa.fi Server Certificate
Extract the file withing the zip-file and transfer the .der-file to your phone. Open the file there and allow the import of the certificate into the phone’s certificate list. If the phone asks for which usage areas the cerficate should be used for, select ”Internet”.
How can you do this yourself? Follow the instructions by Kevin Henrikson in “Gmail POP SSL certs for Symbian / Nokia phones“. I have used Opera to easily export the certificate, but the OpenSSL method used by Kevin also works fine. (Plus there seems to be some bug with the export function in the latest version – 9.10 – of Opera, or at least on Windows Vista. Can’t say which one is the faulty one for sure.) The settings for connecting to the UoV mail server can be found here.