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The Nokia E61i is old. Well, ever since I got a Nokia N95 from my boss. So no longer a privately owned phone (with a company SIM), but a new shiny N95 :).

First impression; plastic fantastic, but a fast plastic fantastic phone. A faster CPU, HSDPA instead of ‘regular’ UMTS, and a ‘normal’ keypad instead of a QWERTY keyboard (which is not an improvement!!)

The OS (Symbian S60) is the same as the OS on the E61i, so no real surprises on that part. Even the backup with Nokia Phone Manager restored on the N95. New features were also included;

• upload images to Flickr
• nokia maps
• built-in GPS

The only real bummer is the lame Nokia Phone Manager software. That application just won’t work properly (it could also be that the crappy Windows OS is helping a hand).

The Certificate Import Tool for Symbian S60 (and other) phones was created on a lousy Sunday afternoon. Mainly, because I was frustrated with the lack of documentation AND support from Nokia on the issue. Nevertheless, it seems that really lots of people are using it (approx 300 a week), and every now and then I receive a donation through PayPal (just click on the donate button).

So to all the donators (you know who you are);

thanks for showing your appreciation!

No matter what you do, there are always social rejects (and this is saying it nice) trying to sabotage you. I’ve been getting various virus alerts on my CA import tool for mobile phones. Every on of them seems to be an attempt to upload a trojan. Thankfully, the AV software intercepts them.

Just to reassure you all; each upload is given a unique name (8 characters). If such a filename already exists, it will be overwritten. So the chance of you getting someone else’s file is (almost) zero. Just make sure that you use the correct name / URL when you’re trying to download the certificate on your phone.

It’s been a couple of days since my firmware update, so it’s time for a small update on the subject.

The biggest advantage is that the mail client is very stable. I use (secure) IMAP and I have 3 mailboxes configured on the device. The mail client hasn’t crashed yet.

The biggest downside (in my opinion) is that the 3G connection drops automatically, so you need to re-establish the connection every time. Sure, it saves bandwidth (and costs), but it’s annoying that you actively have to monitor your e-mail.

Thankfully, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, so I’m still happy with the Nokia E61i.

Early this week, I found a new firmware for my Nokia E61i (out since October 2007). The version I had was v1.x, and this one was v2.0633.65.01 (press *#000# on your E61 to see the current firmaware version).

Updating goes through a separate application, but it should also be possible through download over the mobile network (I haven’t tried this). All you need to know is explained on the Nokia website, but there are some thing you don’t want to forget;

• Use the Nokia Datasuite to create a FULL backup of the phone, because during the upgrade the phone goes back to factory defaults.
• Have lot’s of patience (and some deodorant handy)
• Make sure the PC isn’t doing anything else that might interfere with the update.

The first attempt failed for me. Even with all the warnings (DO NOT INTERRUPT THE UPDATING PROCESS OR DISCONNECT THE PHONE!!!) I rebooted the PC and disconnected the phone. Result, the phone didn’t respond (this is where my deodorant came in). After this I restarted the upgrade process, and the phone got recognized (thankfully). After 10 minutes, the phone rebooted with the new firmware version.

First action was to restore all data and settings on the phone. Since I had some issues with my network connectivity I decided to remove the Access Points and reconfigure them…. Well, don’t. First of all, I wasn’t able to receive the configuration parameters from the mobile operator (SMS ‘ja’ to 1300), so I had to reconfigure them manually.
Their website has a step-by-step manual on configuring the E61i, but this didn’t help either.

MMS functionality remained absent, and none of the applications was able to connect to the Internet by itself. I had to initiate the connection manually before browsing the web.
E-mail was even worse. Every time I had ‘Packet Authentication’ errors. So after a day I decided to restore the Access Points from my backup, and guess what… Everything worked again.

And now for the thing that have changed (at least the ones that I’ve noticed);

• the e-mail application seems more stable
• camera and video are still crappy (the time between the snapshot sound and the actual capture is still multiple seconds)
• Idle connections are terminated. This is a bad thing (for me at least), because I had my UMTS connection open all the time, and this way I received mail throughout the day. Now I have to connect each time I want to check my e-mail.

I haven’t tried VoIP yet, but will try to do so soon (that’s what happens when you don’t pay for your own bills )

Conclusion is that the phone didn’t get better. There are some improvements, and there are some new annoyances. But my e-mail is stable at this moment.

A couple of weeks ago, I was pointed towards Google Maps on my Nokia e61i (I got a download link when I visited google.com on my mobile). After downloading and installing it (which was very easy), I started the application (which was hiding under Menu -> Installations -> Google Maps).

Most basic features are available on the phone app (directions, searching for restaurants etc., Zoom in and out), and there’s the possibility of positioning yourself on the map by using cellular positioning. Thankfully, this is done for you by the application. Downside is that it’s not that accurate. In my case, I could be anywhere in a 1.7 mile radius circle.

It’s also possible to use a GPS mouse (which I recently bought) for your location. The neat thing is that you can see yourself walk across the map (or drive if you’re by car). This is an excellent application.

These is one downside… Google Maps is using a constant Internet connection to update the maps, so make sure you have some sort of flat fee data service (or use wifi when available). Otherwise you might be in for a surprise when you receive your phone bill.

It seems that my little upload / download page for adding root certificate authorities Symbian phones is also a big help for those who use Windows Mobile Devices.

Very strange that there are millions of smartphones on the market, and that everyone, regardless of the phones they have, experience the same problem. Why won’t Microsoft (Windows Mobile) and the Symbian people simplify the interface of adding root CA’s?

Somehow, people are directed to my website by queries which contain the following key-words; ‘remove‘, ‘certificate‘, and ‘e61‘. So, here’s a quick certificate uninstall guide:

Menu -> Tools -> Settings -> Security Settings -> Certif. management -> Scroll down to the certificate you wish to delete -> Options -> Delete -> Confirm Delete -> Yes.

It’s not that hard

(the ‘guide’ is written for the e61i, but I doubt if it’s much different on the e61)

A friend suggested the Opera Mini browser (v4 beta2) as a browser on my Nokia E61i. So I downloaded it and installed it. Great looking browser which renders some sites much better than the normal included browser (and it’s still absolutely free!!).
My online banking site seems to work a bit better anyway.

One thing I haven’t figured out is how to set the Opera Mini browser as the default browser. If I open a link in an e-mail it opens the original browser….

The last couple of days, I’ve had several requests for the source code of the Symcaimport pages. Therefor, I decided to ‘zip’ the files, and serve them to the world.

The pages are written in Macromedia Adobe Coldfusion, but for some one with PHP or ASP knowledge, it should be fairly easy to understand.

Click here to download

B.t.w. It would be nice if you create a link back to my website if you use the pages in some form. And remember that you still need to modify the MIME settings for your webserver for this to work. An alternative is to send the specific MIME setting with the download. Coldfusion does support this, but when I created the pages, I couldn’t be bothered. Perhaps someday….

Someone requested S40 support for the CA certificate Import ‘Wizard’. This ‘tool’ is being used over 50 times a day, so I guess that it works :-). Knowing that it is being used, I added S40 support (theoretically that is, since I don’t have such a device).

Just select the type of device you have (S60 or S40 based). Depending on the selection the extension, and MIME type will be changed.

The S40 devices expect a different MIME type (application/vnd.wap.hashed-certificate). So I added this MIME type to my webserver and associated it with .cer files. More information on this page.

Note, that you need to upload a WPKI certificate instead of a normal one. I’m still figuring out what the exact difference is, so I might do a conversion….

From this day on, you can install certificates from non-trusted CA’s on your Symbian-based phone (like the Nokia E61) using this page.

All you need to do is make sure that the certificate is in the DER format. The webpage doesn’t verify if the certificate is in the correct format. This is up to the uploader.

I created this page, because I work a lot with certificates, so I don’t want to be bothered with the workaround described in the earlier post.

The current version is quick-and-dirty (no error messages). I’ll try to make it more user friendly in the next couple of days (like having the option of sending the URL to an e-mail address). Just make sure that you obey the guidelines shown on the page, and all should go well.

Feel free to add a comment on how to improve this.

UPDATE: This works on (almost) every Symbian based (Nokia) phone. It has been tested with a couple of phones from the Nokia E and N series.

Last week, I recieved my new Nokia E61i. As soon as I tried to connect to my own IMAP server (over SSL/TLS) is started nagging about the (selfsigned) SSL certificate.

The E61 has a certificate store, so I should be able to add other Root CA’s to this store, but this is where the trouble began.

The manual has a chapter on certificates, but it lacks a working explanation on “how to import third party root CA’s”. On my old iPaq, it was simply upload a DER encoded certificate, click on it, and it would install. Well this doesn’t work on the E61 (and many other Symbian-based) phones. Just ‘google’, and you’ll find lot’s of people with similar problems…

The working solution I found uses a website from which you download the certificate with the phone, but there is a catch; you need to add a MIME-type to the website containing the certificate (hence the admin rights).

This is what you need to do (on a Microsoft IIS):

• Make sure you have the certificate in DER format available. If you’re not sure on this, just open the certificate and op en the second tab. Choose ‘Copy to file..‘ and select the DER option.
• Make sure the extension of the certificate is ‘.der‘
• Upload the certificate to your webserver.
• Open the IIS Manager and open the properties on the folder (or website) where you uploaded the certificate.
• Open the ‘HTTP Headers‘ tab, and click on ‘MIME Types‘
• Add a custom MIME type.
  The Extenstion is ‘.der‘ (without the quotes, but with the point), and the MIME Type is ‘application/x-x509-ca-cert‘ (also without the quotes)
• Close all the open windows.
• Go to the URL where you can download the certificate with the built-in browser of your phone (e.g. http://www.redelijkheid.com/temp/certificate.der) .
• Your phone will recognize the file as being a certificate (the MIME type makes sure of this), and will ask you if you want to import it. While importing, the import wizard will ask for trust settings of the certificate. I just enabled both.
• After this you should be able use certificates issued by the newly imported CA without any warning.

B.t.w., this also works for self-signed certificates.

Since not everyone has a private webserver, I will try to created a webpage on which you can upload your certificate. It returns a URL which you can use with your phone browser to download, and install the certificate on your phone.