How to Unlock the Nokia E61 (part 2)

So it was just a matter of time for something else to come out. Now, thanks to the new Nokia BB5 box we may have more Nokia phone models unlocked for less. The new product seems to work for some of the latest models like N95, N75, E65, E50 and E61.

iPhone unlocked as expected

Some words like "locked", "protected", "security" most probably sound like a challenge or an invitation for some people. Mostly for those who have the incredible gift of curiosity and talent to reverse-engineer, hack or completely know in-depth details of any of the products available on the market today without any training, just figuring it out for themselves.
Sometimes a single piece of knowledge is all that is needed to trigger a long series of discoveries and events. This seems to happen quite often, where a community with a goal is benefited with an event that changes the landscape, like I think happened this last days, where a group of teens posted a step-by-step tutorial to unlock the iPhone by combining some hardware and software tecniques. Few hours later the all-software unlock appeared on the web. Now lots of companies offer unlocked iPhones!
Just think about the consequences of this acts for a minute. What will happen with the Apple shares? What about At&T, the company that has the exclusive benefit to suck into all the iPhone user's pockets in the U.S.? What will happen in Europe where the product has not been released yet? Will O2 still agree on the deal with Apple over the iPhone? What about the life of the kids who discovered this? New jobs? What about Steve Jobs? :-D
These and other questions come to my mind when thinking about what happened this week. The more I read the more I want to read, even after being 8 hours at work in front of 2 computers. Shame on me, how would I ever get fit? Yeah, I know.. I'm a bloody geek.

Eat to keep your devices up and running

The title may sound weird, but some people on the Fraunhofer Institute are working on devices capable to take power from the body heat. The scientists generate electricity based on the principle of thermoelectric generators that take advantage of temperature differences.
The possible applications for this technology are huge, including a new iPhone that doesn't need to be returned to Apple to have its battery replaced.

How to Unlock the Nokia E61

As of today, there is no site on the web that can unlock the Nokia E61, so don't lose your time browsing around for magical solutions. Believe me, I've already lost a lot of mine to find that only my service provider can do it. After a long call with the Customer Care number of Vodafone Ireland, they finally gave me the unlocking code (in exchange of my Credit Card codes, front and back :-D).

Fred Flinstone's Chewing Gum

A Scottish archaeology student has found was seems to be a stone age chewing gum. It still holds the tooth impressions of the Neolithic man who presumably used it as a cure for mouth infections (The girl who discovered this also thought it could be fossilized poo).

My Wii is flashing again

Nintendo released today a new update for the Wii that addresses problems with the Opera browser and gives stability to the WLAN connection between other fixes.
I had problems watching a video on youtube yesterday, where the screen froze and a terrible beep was all I could hear. Buttons on the wiimote didn't work so I had to turn it off. Hope this update solves that issue.

Nokia Recalls Millions of BL-5C Batteries

The mobile giant announced today that some of their Nokia-branded BL-5C batteries manufactured by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. of Japan between December 2005 and November 2006 may potentially overheat due to an internal short circuit while charging. More than 46 million units seem to be affected by this recall. The good news is that no serious injury or damage has been reported.
The official statement with information on how to identify the affected batteries and what to do can be found here

Nokia meets Apple and is good news

A new version of Nokia Multimedia Transfer has been released. The application allows users to transfer music, pictures, podcasts, videos and files between the Mac and some models of Nokia mobile phones. This new build adds more compatible phones to the list, including some from the popular E Series.
The Apple market share is growing fast in the EU and the U.S. according to several sources. Nokia certainly noticed this, and the need for an iPhone-like device. Some cool features are already being cloned by users of Nokia devices, like the iPhone keyboard, taking advantage of the open source idea behind the N800.
The future looks exciting for the mobile world and promises fierce competition, price drops and offers for flat-rate data plans from all mobile service providers.

Firmware update on branded Nokia E61

A wise advice I always liked is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", however when talking about my gadgets I prefer to use: "Do as I say, not as I do".
An example of this is my mobile, a new Nokia E61. I bought it from Vodafone Ireland for a reasonable price plus 10 Euro in free calls for eight months, which made the offer more attractive.
As soon as I started to play with the E61, checked the firmware version on it and, to my delight, it was not the lastest one, so once again the opportunity to enjoy a firmware upgrade.
Nokia provides for some of his most recent models, a utility you can download from their site, install on your PC and update the firmware on your mobile from the comfort of your own home by downloading the new code from the internet and transferring it via the USB port to the device.
After installing and launching the Nokia Updater, followed all the steps in order to get the new firmware, but to my surprise I only received a discouraging message telling me that there were no updates available for my phone. It didn't make any sense as the new firmware was officially released!
Doing some research I found out that the update was not available for some branded phones and this was confirmed by other users who had Nokia branded phones from different providers around the world.
After a few days and lots of sites I finally found a blog from someone who had the problem issue and succeeded in forcing a firmware update. Happy days!!
The trick basically consists in changing the Product Code on your mobile to one for which updates are available (I used code 0530151 on my mobile).
I successfully flashed my Nokia E61 to the newest firmware version by following those instructions. The phone was working fine before, but now I fixed it!!.

Parking Online starts today

This blog is dedicated mainly to Gadget Stuff (not the inspector), so if you're one of those, stay tunned..:-D