Category Archives: Devices

A Linux User's Nokia Lumia 920 Review - Part 3: Transferring Files Between Windows Phone 8 and Ubuntu

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Dennis Bournique

@Nokia_Connects has loaned me a Nokia Lumia 920 to try out. This is the first time I've used a Windows Phone device for more than a few minutes. The Lumia runs Windows Phone 8 While there are a few things I don't like about WP8, I'm enjoying the overall user experience. It's refreshingly different than anything else and fast, fluid and, for the most part, very intuitive.

As a Linux user I wondered if it would be possible to connect the Lumia with my Ubuntu laptop and transfer photos, music, videos and documents back and forth.

Like Android 3.0 and later, Windows Phone 8 uses MTP (media transfer protocol) rather than USB mass storage for interfacing with a device's internal Flash storage, and with the SD card if the device uses one (the Lumia doesn't.)

At one time their were some issues with MTP support in Linux, but they seem to be mostly fixed. At least when when connect my Nexus S phone running Android 4.1 to my PC running the ancient, but still supported, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, a Nautilus file explorer window pops up showing the phone's internal "memory card" and I can copy files back and forth between PC and phone. If I drop music files or videos anywhere in the Android phone's drive, the Android Media player finds and plays them with no issues. So it should "just work" with Windows Phone too, right? Well, yes and no.

When I connected the Lumia to my Ubuntu Linux box with a USB cable, as expected, Linux recognized the Lumia as an MPT storage device and opened a Nautilus window displaying the phone's pictures, documents, music, ringtones and videos folders (image, above). That looked promising so I tried copying various types of files to and from what seemed like the appropriate folders. The results were mixed.

Here's what worked:

Images and Videos, Phone to PC: I could open my photos and videos on the phone using the Gnome image viewer or VLC Player and I could copy them to a folder on the PC.
Ringtones: Full track .mp3 (but not .m4a) songs copied into the phone's Ringtones folder could be used as ringtones.
Documents: Text files and Microsoft Office documents that had been saved with Microsoft Office and copied into the phone's Documents folder could be opened with the phone's Office app.
PDFs copied to the phones's Documents folder could be opened using the free Microsoft PDF Viewer from the Windows Store.

Here's what doesn't work:

Images, PC to Phone: Copying .jpeg or .png images to the phone's picture folder or any of its subfolders has problems. The copy seem to work, the phone could be disconnected, power-cycled and re-connected and the files were still on the phone. However the images were not not visible in the phone's Photos Hub gallery.
Videos and Music, PC to phone: Videos or music files copied to their respective folders were not recognized by the WP8 Music and Video Hub media player either.
Documents: If I created a document or spreadsheet with Libre Office or Open Office and saved in MS Office format, it could not be opened with the Office app, which claimed the document was corrupt! Office 2007 on Windows XP and Google Docs opened the "corrupt" files with no complaint.

I was able to find workarounds for all the problem file types:

Video files, PC to Phone: Use Bluetooth. Videos in .mp4, .3gp, and 3g2 formats played on the phone when sent with Bluetooth. They could be found in the Photo Hub's Saved Pictures album and replayed from there. Videos in .ogv, webm, .avi or .mov formats that I tried failed to play.
Music, PC to phone: Use Qlix (image, below), a small app intended to transfer music to Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) devices like the Microsoft's Zune. It's a bit primitive, you can't transfer whole folders of music in a single operation although you can multi-select files in a single folder for transfer, but it works and preserves song titles, artist and album names and cover art. Sending music to the phone with Bluetooth also sort of works. The tracks I sent played and were saved the Music & Videos Hub. But even thought files had ID3v1 tags with artist, album and title information, they where saved on the phone with the filename as the song title (Blue Highway.M4A for example) and with Unknown as the artist and track. There doesn't seem to be any way to edit the title on the phone or add the artist and album name either.
Libre Office and Open Office Documents: Convert with Google Drive. Office on the phone complains that documents saved in MS Office format by Libre Office or Open Office are corrupt. But if you upload the documents to Google Drive in either MS Doc format or native ODF format and then download them from Drive in Office format, Office on the phone can open them.

It's all a bit kludgy, but by using a combination of USB, Bluetooth and Qlix I can move documents, music, photos, videos, and ringtones between my phone and computer. Which is as much as you can do with Microsoft's Windows Phone app for Windows 7 and 8 and apparently more than you can with a Mac.

A Linux User's Nokia Lumia 920 Review - Part 1: First Impressions and Google Apps Integration
A Linux User's Nokia Lumia 920 Review - Part 2: Using Dropbox With Windows Phone 8
A Linux User's Nokia Lumia 920 Review - Part 4 The IE10 Mobile Browser

Posted in Devices | Tagged Linux, Lumia920, Windows Phone | 2 Comments

A Linux User's Nokia Lumia 920 Review - Part 1: First Impressions and Google Apps Integration

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Dennis Bournique

@Nokia_Connects has loaned me a Nokia Lumia 920 to try out for a couple weeks. Here are my initial impressions. Warning, I'm not a Windows user. My desktop OS in Ubuntu Linux and I use an Android phone. But I was curious to try the Lumia to see what Windows Phone 8 was like and whether I could use it productively without a Windows PC.

Physically the Lumia 920 looks a lot like a larger version of the N9 or Lumia 900. The screen even curves down into the sides of the body like the N9. My Lumia is white and the hard polycarbonate body has a smooth polished surface that looks great. It looks slippery but it's not. The smoothly rounded sides fit securely and comfortably between the palm of my hand and my curved fingers and I never felt in any danger of dropping the phone.

The Lumia 920 has a minimum of exterior ports and buttons. There's a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and slide out micro-SIM tray on top and a micro-USB charging and connectivity port on the bottom. There's nothing on the left side. The right side has three buttons: top to bottom they are the volume rocker, power-lock/un-lock button and a dedicated camera button. Except for the slide out SIM tray there are no visible seams or gaps any where on the phone. The 2000 mAh battery is not user replaceable and the Lumia, which has 32 GB of internal storage memory, doesn't support memory cards.

The Lumia's 4.5 inch 1280 x 768 px IPS screen is one the best I've seen on any phone. Blacks are really black and whites are pure and bright. Colors are well saturated and accurate. The screen has a wide viewing angle, colors and detail hold up well when viewing the screen at an angle. The screen also performs really well in bright sunlight. The phone really cranks up the brightness in bright situationsand there seems to be some sort of very effective anti-reflective coating at work as well.

As I mentioned I don't use any Microsoft software or hardware. Until I got the Lumia I'd only spent a few minutes playing with Windows Phone. I expected to hate the Windows Phone OS but ended up enjoying the experience for the most part. High points were the the OS' stability and the responsiveness of the user interface. Transitions between screens and apps are very snappy and animations are buttery smooth.

The Windows Phone 8 user interface is refreshing different from Android, Symbian, iOS or anything else. The main UI element is the Live Tile, which can be a shortcut to an app or file or an animated widget displaying things like the current weather, upcoming calendar events or a slideshow of photos from your gallery. Tiles can be moved and every tile can be re-sized to fit into a 1x1, 4x4 and 4x8 matrix. Although the interface is different then anything I was used to, it has the apparent simplicity and intuitiveness that are the mark of good user interface design. I was able to get up to speed with the basics of calling, messaging, email and the camera in just a few minutes without needing to look at the 16 page quick start guide, which is the only documentation packed with the phone.

I'm a T-Mobile user and the loaner Lumia was locked to AT&T. I'm using a SIM from Red Pocket Mobile, an AT&T prepaid MVNO. Red Pocket uses different APNs than AT&T for data and MMS. Both APNs use a proxy. Unlike with WP7, iOS and Symbian Belle, all of which hide or disable the MMS APN, I was a able to easily enter all the required settings.

AT&T doesn't allow their pay as you go or MVNO customers to use their LTE network so I couldn't test the Lumia's LTE speeds. Using HSPA+, the Lumia 920 generally achieved data speeds of a little better than 6 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up.

In contrast to the openness of its APN settings, just about everything else about Windows Phone seems tightly locked down. Unlike with Android or Symbian the only way to install apps is through the Windows Store. There's no side loading and there aren't any alternate app stores. There's also very limited access to the phone's file system. There is no pre-installed file explorer and none is available in the Windows Store. Third party apps can create and save files in their own private area of the file system but the only way to share files between apps seems with SkyDrive or other cloud storage.

I have Outlook.com and Skydrive accounts but don't really use them. Cloud services I do use include Dropbox, Gmail and Google Contacts and Calendar. I expected some issues connecting the Lumia with those cloud services but it went better than I expected with Gmail and Google Calendar and Contacts. I was able setup my Google account on the Lumia relatively easily. Here's the drill:

Go to Settings > email + accounts > add an account > advanced setup
Enter your full Gmail address and password when prompted and then hit Next
Click Exchange Active Sync
On the next screen enter m.google.com in the Server box. Leave Domain blank
Press sign in and you are done.

In less than a minute I had all my email, contacts and calendar on my Lumia with real time push sync. It works great and the WP8 Email app does a decent job with Gmail.

Unfortunately, Google is shutting down their Exchange service to new users on January 30, 2012. Current users will be able to keep using Exchange on their current device, but after Jan. 30 new Windows Phone users will not be able to sync Google Calendar and Contacts. Gmail will still sync if you set it up as an IMAP account but it will use polling rather than push.

So far I haven't had much luck using Dropbox with Windows phone. There are a bunch of Dropbox apps in the Window store. I've tried a couple and they sort of worked but not well enough to really be useful to me. I think my requirements for a Dropbox app are simple:

The ability to download any file from Dropbox, save it on the phone and let me open it with the phone's default app for that file type; Office for text files, Gallery for images and Media Player for music and videos.
For plain text files, regardless of their I file extension (.html, .css, .js, .php, etc.) I need to be able to edit the local copy and save the changes back to Dropbox.

Hopefully I'll find a Dropbox app that will let me do what I want. If you know of one please let me know in a comment.

A Linux User's Nokia Lumia 920 Review - Part 2: Using Dropbox With Windows Phone 8
A Linux User's Nokia Lumia 920 Review - Part 3: Transferring Files Between Windows Phone 8 and Ubuntu
A Linux User's Nokia Lumia 920 Review - Part 4 The IE10 Mobile Browser

Posted in Devices | Tagged Linux, Lumia920, Windows Phone | 4 Comments

Hands on With Nokia's New Windows Phones

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Dennis Bournique

Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia 710

Today at Nokia World in London, Nokia announced its first Windows phones, the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 701. I wasn't able to make it to London but Nokia held a press event at their US headquarters in the Silicon Valley today where I got a chance to see and try both phones. Here are my first impressions.

The Nokia 800 (above, left; below, right) is the higher end of the two. It is a gorgeous device with a quality feel. Externally it's almost identical to the N9 MeeGo phone (below, left). Like the N9, it has a one piece polycarbonate body with a non-removable battery and a glass screen that is smoothly curved into the body at the edges. The only physical differeces I could find between the N9 and the 800 are that the Windows phone has a physical camera button and a slightly smaller 3.7" vs 3.9" screen to make room for the three standard Windows phone capacitive buttons.

Nokia N9 and Lumia 800

The 800's camera has nearly identical specs to the N9 too; 8 MP, autofocus, Carl Zeiss lens and dual led flash.

The software on the 800 looks to be Standard Windows Phone Mango with the addition of a couple of exclusive Nokia apps.

Nokia Drive which brings turn by turn navigation with voice guidance to Windows Phone. As with Nokia Maps on Symbian, maps and waypoints can be downloaded and stored locally on the phone for instant access regarless of network connectivity. I found Drive worked well, quickly finding my current location and an address that I searched for and calculating ehe route between them.
Mix Radio which will deliver free streaming music worldwide. The music comes in the form of mixes of multiple full songs. The mixes can be streamed for free with no registration or login required and can also be download and stored on the phone for offline playback. Unfortunately Mix Radio was not installed on the either on the phones I tried which were running pre-release firmware.

Zooming and scrolling in Drive's maps was very snappy with no noticible lag. The same was true of the entire Windows Phone interface on the 800. There was no hesitation when switching from screen to screen or scrolling.

Priced at 420 EUR ($584) unsubsidized, the Nokia 800 will be available in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK in November and in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan by year end. UK customers can pre-order a Lumia N8 now. If your willing to sign a two year contract at 30 GBP or more you can get the Lumia 800 for free! That's typical of the UK operators who subsidize phones much more heavily than their US counterparts.

US availability was not announced although Nokia did say that a "portfolio" of Windows Phones would be offered in the US early in 2012 and that it would include GSM, CDMA and LTE models.

Nokia's unique Pentaband 3G radio is missing from the 800 possibly due to limitations with the Qualcomm Snapdragon SOC that Nokia is using. There is quad band (850, 800, 1900, 2100) 3G support. This means both of AT&T's 3G bands are covered but not T-Mobile's unusual 1700/2100 combo. I suspect that there will eventually be Nokia Windows Phones with support for T-Mobile USA'S 3G band.

The Lumia 710 is the value offering on the Lumia line. Priced at 270 EUR ($375) it gives up very little in specs or performance compared with its higher priced sibbling. Both phones use the same 1.4 Mhz single core processor and 512 MB of RAM, both have 3.7" 800 x 480 px ClearBlack screens and an auto-focus camera and both include the Nokia Dive and Lyric apps. The main differences are that the 710's screen uses less expensive TFT LCD vs AMOLED technology, the camera is 5 MP instead of 8 MP and has a Nokia rather than a Carl Zeiss lens, there's 8 MB of storage memory rather than 16 MB and the battery is smaller but removable.

When I tried the Lumia 710 its performance seemed just as snappy as its pricier brother. The lower spec screen might not have been quite as bright but I really notice the difference. Although I've heard the 710 described as "clunky" I really can't agree. While it's not as elegant or as expensive feeling as the 800, its lighter and only insigniffigantly thicker (a third of a millimeter, about the thickness of a business card) and is eminently pocketable.

The Lumia 710 will be available by year end. It will be offered initially in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan with other countries getting it later.

The Lumia 710's 3G radio is limited to 3 bands (900, 1900 and 2100) which should be fine for its target markets.

Nokia Lumia 800 and 710

Overall I'm impressed with Nokia's Windows Phones. The combination of WP Mango's ease of use, performance and stability with Nokia's elegant design sensibility, best cameras in the business, free navigation and music looks like a winning combination. Personally, I'm especially happy to see the return of auto-focus cameras to Nokia smartphones. The EDOF (fixed focus) cameras on the E6, C7 and E7 worked very well for general photography and videos but their inability to shoot closeups made them unusable as the main camera for a blogger who sometimes needs to photograph phones.

Posted in Devices | Tagged Lumia 710, Lumia 800, Mango, Nokia, Windows Phone | 4 Comments

Nokia N9 MeeGo/Harmattan Swipe UI Tips and Tricks

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Dennis Bournique

I'm really enjoying my N9 loaner from NokiaConnects. It's one of the most innovative new phones I've used in a long time. The "Swipe" UI is very efficient, there's obviously been a lot of thought put into making it easy to get things done. Still it is like no other phone before it and users coming from another platform, even Maemo, will need a little time to get up to speed. Thankfully. the learning curve is shallow and after only a week I feel I'm able to use the full power of the Swipe interface with confidence, something that took me months with Symbian and Android. Here are some of the discoveries I've made in the process of learning my way around the N9. Hopefully they will be useful to others.

How to power on the N9: Press and hold the silver button below the volume rocket on right side (image above, left). When you press the button the white led at the bottom left of the screen should light up. Keep holding the button until "NOKIA" appears on the screen. If you are power cycling the phone you need to wait at least 10 seconds after turning the phone off before it will let you turn it back on.

How to unlock the N9: When locked, the N9 screensaver displays a large clock. If you have unread emails, Twitter Direct Messages, event notifications or missed calls they will be indicated by an icon. The (image above, center) shows an @ sign icon indicating unread emails.

To unlock tap the power button and the lock screen (image above, right) will display (you can also double tap the locked N9 to display the lock screen). With the lock screen showing swipe your finger from any edge (left, right, top or bottom) of the phone toward the center of the screen. This is MeeGo/Harmattan's signature "swipe" gesture and you will be using it a lot on the N9. The swipe is a genius innovation and makes the N9 very easy to use. Just remember that a swipe always begins off screen from the edge of the phone. If you try to start a swipe from within the visible part of the screen it will scroll the screen rather than registering as a swipe. Conversely, if you are scrolling within an app, start you drag action within the confines of the screen otherwise it will be interpreted as a swipe and take you to a homescreen.

How to quickly change the N9's ringer volume or set silent or beep mode: Tap the volume down rocker and the top status bar will show you a volume control (image above, left). Keep tapping to cycle though three ringer volume levels plus beep and silent mode. You can also tap the status bar, which is visible on all screens when the phone is unlocked, and tap the volume control to set the ringer volume or mode.

Use the status bar to control connections and IM availabilty: From any screen tap the top status bar to see what data connections the phone is using (Mobile network, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) as well as your availability (online, offline, busy, etc. on Facebook, Skype and other IM networks you have configured) (image above, center). Tap a connection to disconnect it or switch between the mobile network and Wi-Fi (image above, right). Tap "Availability" to change your availability or post a status message and optionally, your location to your networks (image below, left).

Navigating the N9's three homescreens: The N9 has three home screens, but unlike with Symbian, iOS or Android they aren't just app launchers. Nokia calls the three screens "Events" (image above, center), "Applications" (image above, right) and "Open Applications" (image below, left) but I prefer to think of them as Notifications, Launcher and Task Manager. To get to the home screens from within a running app, swipe from any edge of the phone toward the center of the screen. To switch between home screens swipe from the left or right edge of the phone.

Understanding the N9's Events: When important events (such as a new email, text message, Twitter direct message or a calendar event) occur the N9 will sound an alert tone and notify you in several other ways.

If the phone is locked an "@" sign or other icon will appear on the screen saver below the clock to alert to you of any new notifications. When you unlock the phone a summary of the alert(s) contents is displayed on the lockscreen (image above, center). Swipe the the alert off the screen to the left or right to view the alert the associated app (Email, Twitter, Calendar, etc.)
If you are using the phone and a notifiable event occurs a summary message appears for about 10 seconds in the status bar at the top of the screen. If you manage to tap it before it disappears the event opens in its app.
If you have unread notifications, a green flag icon is displayed in the status area at the top of the screen (images above, center and right). Tapping the flag doesn't take you to the alert however. Instead, swipe to a home screen and then if necessary swipe until you get the Events home screen where the alert(s) will be displayed at the top. Tap an alert to open it.

How to view the Weather, your Twitter timeline, Facebook news feed, AP News headlines and RSS feeds on the N9 homescreen: In addition to alerts the N9's Events home screen can display the current temperature and weather conditions and your Facebook ewsfeed, Twitter Timeline and RSS feeds. To configure the Events home screen:

To get the weather on the homescreen, tap the grayed out Accuweather icon at the top of the Events screen (image above, right), Tap the city name, ("San Francisco" in the image above left), and then tap "Use curent location" or enter a postal code or city name
To add your Twitter Timeline or Facebook Newsfeed, Launch the Twitter or Facebook app and enter your username or email and password. Once you set up the Twitter and Facebook apps the Timeline and Newsfeed will appear automatically on the Events homescreen.
To display an RSS feed on the Events screen, open the site whose feed you want to use with the browser, press the menu icon in the top right corner and choose "Subscribe to feed" (image above, center). On the next screen select "Show feed on home screen" and then tap "Subscribe".

How to temporarily hide items from Twitter or Facebook or a News feed from the Events homescreen: Do a long press on an item from the feed you want to hide and choose "Clear <feedname>" (for example "Clear Twitter", image above, right). This removes currently displayed feed items from the screen which makes it easier to find items from other feeds.

How to permanently hide Twitter or Facebook or a News feed from the Events homescreen: Do a long press anywhere on the Events homescreen and choose Settings. On the next screen (image above, left) you can toggle the display of Twitter, Facebook or AP News. To hide RSS feeds, go to the Feeds app, long press the feed you want to hide and deselect "Show feed on the home screen".

How to use the Quickbar for instant access to Contacts, Camera, Browser or Dialer: From the lock screen or from within a running app, swipe up from the bottom of the screen for about a quarter of an inch (10 mm) and a shortcuts screen will appear with icons for Contacts, Camera, Browser or Dialer (image above, center). This only seems to work from the lockscreen or with an app. It would be nice if it worked on the homescreens too, but it doesn't.

How to add your favorite apps to the Quickbar: Install the free Shortcuts app by Sheerwater from the Nokia Store (image above, right). It lets you replace any of the preinstalled shortcuts with any app using drag and drop.

Want more apps?: Launch the Store app, log in to or create a Nokia account and search or browse for apps and games

Want even more apps? How to install apps from 3rd party sites and app stores: Go to Settings > Applications > Installations and sellect "Allow installations from non-Store sources" (image above, center). The best 3rd party app store I've found for the N9 is my-meego.com/software/ (image above, right). It currently has over 400 MeeGo/Harmattan apps and games, about twice as many as the Nokia Store.

How to manage the Applications (Launcher) homescreen: Do a long press anywhere on the App launhcer screen to enable edit mode which lets you rearrange your app icons using drag an drop.

How to use the Running Apps (homescreen) task manager: Running Apps, as Nokia calls the task manager, is one of the three homescreens so you can get there with "just a swipe". It shows thumbnails of all your running apps, four at a time. If you have more than four active apps, scroll down to see the rest. Pinch to zoom to toggle the display between showing 4 and 9 apps (image above, left) per page. Tap a thumbnail to switch to the app. To close one or more apps do a long press anywhere on the task switcher screen to reveal individual "X" close buttons on each app and a "Close all" button (image above, center).

How do you bookmark a Webpage?: In MeeGo/Harmattan all Web pages are Webapps. There are no bookmarks. Instead, tap the menu icon in the top right corner of the browser and choose "Save to apps" which will create an icon on the Applications (Launcher) homescreen. If the site specifies an apple-touch-icon, MeeGo/Harmattan will use it as the launcher icon, if not it will use a tiny screenshot of the page (In the screen shot above all the apps after "Shortcuts" are Webapps. WapReview, Google+ and Identica have provided apple-touch-icons and rest haven't and get screencaps).

How to upload photos to Twitter?: The N9 Gallery app has options to share a picture with Facebook, Fickr or Picasa but not to Twitter. There's no photo upload feature in the bult-in Twitter app or in TwimGo which is the only other Twitter app I've found for the N9. Twitter Webapps don't work fi=or image uploading because the N9 browser doesn't support the <input type="file"/> element that they all use. @msjen on Twitter suggested using TwitPics post by email feature which works well. To use it:

Go to TwitPic.com and login with your Twitter credentials.
Click Settings and write down the post by email address that's displayed and add it to your N9 contacts (pasting addresses into contacts isn't supported!)
Go to the Gallery and find the picture you want to share. Tap the screen and then tap the share icon and choose "Mail" (image below, left)
Send the email to your Twitpic email address. Enter your tweet text as the email subject.

Sharing this way works and is easy. Unfortunately, the N9's email app limits email subject lines (and thus Tweet text) to 70 characters. Thanks to a tip from @jjklee I discovered you can also use Flikr's Flickr2Twitter service's post by email feature to simultaneously post a picture to Flickr and Twitter. Like TwitPic, Flickr2Twitter uses the email subject line as the Tweet text so again you are limited to 70 characters.

How to enable and disable WiFi or mobile network data or force the phone to use a specific network: On the Applications (Launcher) homescreen tap Settings > Internet Connection > Edit Networks (image above, center). Then tap each network you want to disable and de-select "Use automatically". If the network is connected, tap "Disconnect". Then go to the network you want force the phone to use and enable, "Use automatically" and tap "connect".

How to close the current app with a swipe: Go to Settings > Device > Display and enable "Swipe down to close app" (image above, right). Now you can close your current app by swiping down. When you close an app this way MeeGo/Harmattan takes you back to the task switcher where you can switch to another.

How to backup the N9: Go to Settings > Sync and backup > Backup and tap New backup (image above, left).

Where are backups stored?: In /home/user/MyDocs/.backups With the phone connected to a PC this shows up as simply .backups/

If you are using a file manager on the phone (there's not one pre-installed, File Manager Beta by Sheerwater from the Nokia Store works well (image above center)) or a Linux (and probably Mac OS) PC you need to enable "Show hidden files" in order to see the .backups folder. Individual ackups consist of directories with names like Backup0, Backup1 which can be copied to a PC for archival purposes.

How to restore a backup from your PC after a hard reset. Connect your phone in USB mass storage mode. The phone will show up as a removable disk. create a folder named .backups (note the leading dot) in the root of the removable drive. Copy the backup directory (i.e., Backup0 or Backup1 into the backup folder. discount the USB cable, open Settings > Sync and backup > Backup and you should see your backup. Tap it and choose Restore.

How to fix "Service unavailable" errors with Twitter, Nokia Account and Store: There seems to be a bug with MeeGo/Harmattan where if a network error occurs when you first enable one of the built in services it will always display "Service currently unavailable" when you try to enable or use it later. I had this problem with both the built-in Twitter app and with my Nokia account (used by the Store). I tried several things to fix this issue (power cycle, soft reset, changing my Nokia password) and none worked. The only thing that did work was a hard reset (Settings > Reset > Clear device), ( image above, right). This will delete everything on the phone including calendar events, photos and any apps you have installed. Be sure to backup the phone first and copy the backup to a PC as a hard reset deletes backups too.

I will have the N9 for about another week before I have to return it to NokiaConnects. So if you have any questions that aren't answered here, leave me a comment below and will I do my best to answer them.