CellPhoneBurn

A new vulnerability is hitting certain Nokia phones: the “Curse of Silence” affects Nokia S60 devices running 2.6, 2.8, 3.0, or 3.1, and blocks your phone from receiving SMS and MMS messages. Unfortunately, you can’t solve the problem with a simple power cycle - according to the advisory, you need to perform a factory reset to fix it. The good news is that it’s more annoying than dangerous, since the attack requires the phone number of the recipient/victim.

The attack requires a (email) message sent that contains an email address with a length greater than 32 characters, followed by a space. Depending on the target’s S60 version, one of two things will happen:

Nokia Handwriting Calculator: Definitely beta.

Definitely one of the more interesting products to come out of the Beta Labs as of late, the Nokia Handwriting Calculator evaluates written mathematical expressions. So you could write out a simple 2 + 2 and click the calculate button, and you’d get the correct answer of 4. Or you could write some crazy, mixed-up expressions, add some happy faces, and completely break the program.

PC Suite: Install mobile applications for fun and for profit!

Head over to Nokia Europe for the latest version of the Nokia PC Suite.

New additions include device notifications (battery/call/SMS), calendar management through Nokia Communication Centre, and the ability to create or modify caller groups.

Nokia Maps 3.0 gets some giant 3D landmarks, and some other stuff.

Hot off the press from Nokia Beta Labs, the Nokia Maps 3.0 application has a couple flashy new improvements over the old version: 3D landmarks, Ovi integration, higher-res maps, walk navigation alerts, and what looks like even more paid real-time options (camera alerts?, traffic, movies/events). Ah, if only navigation was free…

Grab it at the Beta Labs.

The Nokia E66 Phone, Boxed

There’s two semi-new firmware updates for the Nokia E66 and E71 smartphones, as well as a general update to the Nokia Software Updater app. Changes include “performance improvements” for the camera (viewfinder orientation), Mail for Exchange synchonization, and browsing. You also get the latest versions of Mail for Exchange and Nokia Maps.

Herre’s hoping Nokia fixed the dedicated camera key actually functioning as a dedicated camera key bug, the wacky accelerometer, and this annoying bug I get sometimes that causes the backlighting to remain off when unlocking the phone.

Mobile Millenium: Conducting Real-Life Traffic Experiments on You

*with participation.

Sometime in February, Nokia and the University of California at Berkeley conducted a real-world traffic experiment using cars outfitted with Nokia N95s to see if GPS-enabled mobile phones could gather location data and pinpoint trafficky areas.

Twitter + GPS = Nokia Friend View

Nokia is seriously gung-ho about location-based software, and the recently released Friend View is a pretty good example of that. Friend View is a social location app that lets you “microblog” aka Twitter short messages for your friends to read. You can also share your current position via your phone’s GPS to simplify meetups and coordinate other fun-filled events.

The software is made up of an S60 Third Edition app (tested on most N/Eseries devices) and non-functional web site.

A motley crew featuring the N78. N85, and 5700 XpressMusic.

If you’re looking to spice up your phone’s sound effects, check out Nokia’s Audio Themes page. There’s currently a good 20 themes that can change your default sounds to something more pleasurable. Free of course.

The Nokia Car Kit gets another update. Now how about my E66?

Salvaged from a previous entry: “If you’re one of the ten owners of the Nokia Car Kit CK-300, you’re in luck: Nokia just released an updated firmware for the device.” And so it is again. The aptly named CarMenu application is now rockin’ with some new, badass features like bigger, more badass fonts.

Here’s the changelog:

Well, that was quick. The Nokia N96, fresh from being released mere (days? weeks?) ago, already has its own firmware update. While no one’s sure on what the firmware actually fixed, what’s more important is what the update actually broke: earpiece volume. Ouch.

Meanwhile, owners of the N82 candy bar get a nice, smooth ride to version 30, with updates that include better performance and battery life, Flash Lite 3, Maps 2.0, Share Online, Music player visualizations, and a lot of other sweet fixes.

As usual, get the latest firmware with the Nokia Software Updater PC application.

Good news for Nokia 6210 Navigator owners: Mobile Dictionary is now officially compatible with your phone. That brings total device compatibility for the app to a grand total of…5 phones.

Mobile Dictionary is a handy Symbian application that lets you translate words from one language to another. What’s cool is that you’re not limited to just one language, namely English. What’s not cool is that the app only supports three languages, one being English (which is also unremovable). So you basically get two language slots to fill with one of 41 language packs provided by Nokia.

This month’s official S60 newsletter included a nice little “tip of the month” column that highlighted the quickest way to add a carriage return (enter key basically) to your text messages/notes: just hit the 0 (zero) button three times. So simple, yet so effective.

So that got me a little excited (that was something I’d been trying to figure out for ages), and thinking at the same time. Which resulted in the idea for this entry: the continually updating S60 phone shortcut post. Some of these will probably be pretty well known already, but I’m hoping it’ll be a nice reference for all.

Got any cool shortcuts? Send them by mail or add a comment, and I’ll drop it into this post.

Win a 6210 Navigator and some fat green creatures in Nokia's latest contest.

In an effort to get Nokia Maps into the spotlight, Nokia is hosting a “test your knowledge of the world” contest. It’s actually a pretty cool flash game: you have a world map, push-pins, and 10 different cities, and the goal is to drop the push-pins as close to the actual location as possible. You get bonus points if you can get the location within a certain distance.

Here’s going backwards for you: Nokia’s latest Beta Labs creation, the so-called S60 Enhanced Calculator, is actually the same software that’s preloaded on certain Nokia S40 phones. Of course, it IS a more fully featured application than the current S60 calculator, so we’ll let it slide.

Features include a standard, scientific, and loan functions for your calculating pleasure.

The Beta Labs says that it’s compatible with any S60 phone that has a QVGA screen. Which is pretty much everything.

Enhanced Calculator for S60

Nokia N-Gage’s flagship puzzle game Reset Generation is now freely available for download or online play (requires Java Runtime Environment). Or, you can choose to drop a cool 10 euros on the mobile version.

“Your groin is nice and soft, for kicking!”

As for the game itself, it’s, well…interesting. (see quote above) And extremely confusing at first. Think of it as a turn-based mixture of Tetris and Bomberman with a bunch of familiar, oldschool characters and some quirky rules.