Carphone Warehouse have got a great offer on at the moment, they are selling an NEC e616 mobile phone on the Three network, which includes 500 cross network minutes and 100 SMS per month on a 12 month contract for just £2.99 per month!!! pretty crazy offer dont u think? I have got one of these phones myself and am very happy with it :)
You can view the offer here (update: looks like this offer has expired now)
Carphonewarehouse also have a "trade-in" deal, whereby if you send in your old phone, charger and manual, you get an extra £20 off the cost of the phone.
And if that wasnt good enough if you order the phone via a site like RPoints.com you can get an extra £11 off the deal! So basically you will be getting the phone plus all the free monthly minutes and texts for just £5 overall! insane bargain dont you think??!!
Ive written an application that lets you send SMS via GenieTexter remotely from your mobile phone, my application is basically an HTML webpage with embedded javascript. I decided to write it because a guy called Dean wrote a similar application, but it required 2 Java applications to be installed, one on the phone and one on the PC. My phone doesnt allow the user to install their own Java applications on it, but it can run webpages with embedded javascript and my phone can also send email (for free :) so I decided to write my own GenieTexter remote client that utilises those features.
The application lets you select the contact you want to send an SMS to and lets you enter the message, then when you click send, it pops open your phones email client and lets u send the specially formatted email to the POP3 email account that you have set GenieTexter to check. When GenieTexter checks the POP3 mailbox and finds the specially formatted email message, it deciphers it and sends off your message via SMS to the intended recipient.
Firstly if you havent already downloaded and installed GenieTexter, you should do that now, you then need to setup some SMS services and add some contacts to the GT address book, information on how to do this is available in the GenieTexter Tutorial.
Once you have setup GenieTexter goto http://steeev.freehostia.com/3mail/gt-phone-app.cfm
This is the page that will generate your custom GenieTexter Email 2 SMS client. You need to enter the POP3 email address that you are going to be sending your SMSes to in the first box, then you need to open your GenieTexter contacts file, the instructions on how to do this are on the gt-phone-app webpage, you then need to copy and paste the contents of that file into the other textbox, then click submit. Upon clicking submit you will be presented with 2 options, either to load the file or to save it, you should choose to save the file. Then if you have got an NEC e616v phone you need to email the file to your phone as an attachment. (You need to have already setup your 3mail account, if you havent see the phones instruction book).
Now you need to check your email account on your phone, but you must do this via the Services menu in the phones web browser (clicking the triangle key usually takes you to the web browser on most 3 phones) Then after going to Services you need to select Mail. Once you have selected Mail, you should bookmark this page, as it will make it easier to come back to in future. Tip for NEC e616v owners, if you hold down the button for a couple of seconds when clicking a link you automatically add a bookmark for that link.
Now you are in the webmail client, you need to go to the inbox, and you should have an email waiting for you. Open the email then click "View attachments" Then click on gtclient.htm, then click Download. If youve got a different phone you might be able to just copy the saved webpage directly from your PC to an area on your phone where you can open it in your phones web browser, as that is the ultimate aim of emailing the page to the phone. Anyway you should now be able to see the Email 2 SMS client in your phones web browser. Now that you have this set up. You should setup GenieTexter on your PC.
In order for this to work you need to have a PC that is connected to internet and running GenieTexter, and GenieTexter needs to be setup to check a POP3 mailbox. To setup GenieTexter's POP3 checking function, you just need to goto the Edit menu, then select POP3 setup. Then enter your POP3 email server, username and password, and make sure the "Jammy Client" box is ticked and also make sure the box for "Normal Client" is not ticked. Then click "OK". Now you need to put GT in pop3 checking mode, which you do by going to the "File" menu and selecting "Start POP3 Checking"
Now after all that you can try the Email 2 SMS application out. Go back to your phone and move the cursor to the Select Box under the Text "Send SMS To" and click on it, then select the person you want to send the SMS to. Once you have done that, move the cursor to the Input box under the text that says "Message" click on that then enter your message. Once you have finished, click the send button. You will now be presented with some options, you need to choose Number 4 (Email). You will now be shown the email compose window, with all the necessary data filled in for you :) All you need to do now is to click the send button and your specially formatted email will be sent to your POP3 email box that GenieTexter will be checking.
When GenieTexter checks the email account and sees your specially formatted email it will read it and attempt to send your SMS for you.
While developing this Email 2 SMS application, i found out that if the mobile number you want to send to is in International format eg +447xxxxxxx or 447xxxxxxx then GT's POP3 Email 2 SMS function wont work, it looks like a bug in GenieTexter, as you can only send to numbers beginning with a zero using this system.
I have only tried this application out on my own NEC e616v phone and it works fine, and dont know if it will work on others, I have access to a Nokia 7600 though, so I will test it out on that shortly too. I can see no reason why it wouldnt work on other phones too. People who might benefit from this application are people on the Three network, as at the moment its possible to send free Emails from these phones ;)
Steeev
UPDATE I just tested the app out on the nokia 7600 but it didnt work. It looks like the Nokia 7600's web browser doesnt support Javascript.
Whilst on holiday i wanted to transfer my files from my phone to a friends laptop, as the phone was running out of memory space, but the problem was i forgot to take the nec e616v software install cd along with me, so i was bang out of luck, i tried doing a search on the internet for the drivers and transfer program, but only managed to find the drivers, which didnt help much as without the file transfer program i couldnt transfer my files to the laptop.
anyway, i was just browsing a 3g website and found a link to the file transfer program installer, though its too late for me, as im back from the holiday now, i hope this helps someone else out in future, so here it is, enjoy :)
http://orebrovip.se/temp/nec_e616v_setup.rar
N.B Apparently this link to the transfer software doesnt work any more, see the message titled Further Update, below, for an alternative download site.
BTW the file is in RAR format which is like a zip file, but you need to download and install a special program called WinRar to be able to extract the exe file.
Also heres the link to the USB drivers for the NEC e616v phone: http://www.nec.se/upload/USB_Drivrutin_e616.zip
Theres some info on how to install the drivers in the Aussie3g forum: here
Please note these files are not hosted by me, im just providing links to the files that i found on the internet, so if the links dont work, please dont ask me for the software or help with the installation. You could try asking in the forum that is linked above. Cheers :)
UPDATE Another useful file for the e616v is the phone's manual, which is in PDF format and can be downloaded from here
FURTHER UPDATE A lot of people seem to be having trouble getting hold of the file transfer tool, heres another place you can get it from:
http://www.gsmegypt.org/support/register.php
you first need to create a free account on the gsmegypt forum, then login with your new account, then goto the following page
http://www.gsmegypt.org/support/index.php?&direction=0&order=&directory=GSM%20PHONES/NEC
You can then download the Transfer Tool from there.
I have also uploaded the transfer program to http://www.driverguide.com
Ive gone to a lot of effort sorting out these downloads and links, so if anyone is grateful and would like to thank me for my efforts, they can donate a couple of quid to my paypal account, which is steeev (AT) gmx (DOT) net
Ive written a web page application that you can use on your 3 phone, it will let you grab web pages and files from the internet, thus getting around 3's "walled garden". I have so far only tested this application out on an NEC e616v, so dont know if it will work on other 3 handsets, I dont see any reason why it shouldnt also work on other 3 handsets, please let me know your experiences, cheers.
The way it basically works is it lets you enter a URL, and you send that URL by email to a web service that grabs the Web page or file that you have requested from the web and emails it straight back to you.
Installation of my www3mail application is easy, just save the www3mail web page to your computer then send it as an attachment via email to your 3 phone's 3mail account.
Now you need to open your phones email client and open the email attachment. The problem is the phones built in email client, which is accessible by clicking the Msg softkey and then clicking on 3mail, doesnt let you view html attachments, so the solution is to open the phones "web browser" and go to the services page where you can check your 3mail via a webmail type interface. To do this you need to click the triangle button on your 3 phone which opens the phones browser, now go to the services page, then select Mail. To make this process of opening the webmail client quicker in future its a good idea to bookmark this page, then in future you can just open the browser, select bookmarks then select Mail. Anyway you should by now have a new mail in your Inbox. Open it then drill down to the attachment and click on the attachment and it should open the attached www3mail web application in your phones browser. You should also bookmark this page, as the process of opening the mail and then drilling down to the attachment is a bit long winded, so if you bookmark the attachment, you will be able to return to it much quicker in future :)
Once the www3mail application page has loaded, you are presented with a number of options.
First you need to select the retrieval service, next you need to select what type of web query you want to make. The default selection is "grab this url", which lets you enter a full URL into the text box below, and when you submit the page to the webgrabber service, it will grab that page and email it back to you.
The other options basically let you enter search terms for various search engines, thus saving you having to type in extra long URLs. The search options available at present are: Search Google, Search Google (alt), Search Google News, Search Google Groups and Search IMDB.com
After entering your query and pressing submit, you will be presented with a choice of either sending the message as an SMS, an MMS or an email, you need to select email. After you do that, you will be in the email sending window, with the email you are about to send ready assembled. All you need to do now is click the send button then wait for the service to send back your requested page or file.
Though this system works, theres a number of flies in the ointment:
1) 3 started charging to send emails on 1st December, I think it now costs 25p to send an email, even if its just 1 or 2 lines long! Imagine trying to surf the web at 25p per page! it would soon work out rather expensive, though i guess it might be useful in emergencies. But if it was an emergency, the second fly in the ointment wouldnt help much.
2) The amount of delay between sending out your request and the reply coming back can sometimes be quite long, you would need to find a faster grabbing service, as the current one is quite slow to respond. Anyone fancy offering such a service to 3 UK users? :)
3) There is no instant notification of emails arriving in your inbox, well there doesnt appear to be any on my NEC e616v handset, perhaps other handsets do have this feature. So you wont know if your request has been answered or not.
I will leave you with this extra tip. Go into the phones settings and make the font smaller, this will mean you can fit much more text on the screen. Quite handy for reading long emails or web pages.
Another tip is I suggest you try out the www3mail application in your web browser on your pc before installing it on your phone. Just to familiarise yourself with how it actually works.
Anyway I hope someone finds this article helpful, perhaps if you are still getting free email on your three UK phone, it could be of some use.
Oh BTW i should point out the agora webpage grabbing service is only meant for research purposes, so bear that in mind. Someone should set up a similar service just for 3 UK users, would be cool! :)
UPDATE
Just had some more ideas, another thing to be aware of is that you could use this application to retrieve other types of files eg multimedia content, so it could actually work out cheaper, than downloading 3's own content. For example say someone encoded a video and put it on the web somewhere, you could download it via this process for 25p whereas 3 would charge you £1.50 or whatever the rate is for video downloads.
*Just had another Brainwave!*
Another idea that would make it even cheaper (free even), if you could get the application to work via SMS it would work out even cheaper, as the requests that are sent by email are quite short, the info that is sent could fit in an SMS, if someone were to setup a service where you could SMS your request for a webpage or file, and the service would then email the webpage or file back to you, (you would need to register your number with the service first so they know what email address to send the files to) then it would work out at 10p a page, or if you had inclusive text messages on your contract completely free!!
If you liked this article you might also be interested in an earlier article i wrote which was about connecting your PC to your NEC e616v mobile phone so that you can send and receive 3mail directly on your PC. You can read that here: http://tinyurl.com/5yue4
YET ANOTHER UPDATE Ive heard rumours that sending mail via the phones built in email client is still free, people in various forums have noticed that they can still send emails via the built in email client when they have run out of credit on their pre-pay phones. If you try to send email via 3's webmail client, you will still be charged. And the good news is that my www3mail web browser uses the phones built in email client to send webpage requests, so in theory you shouldnt get charged for using it :) !!!!!
Further Update
I have done some research into what browser the nec e616v phone is using, it appears to be NetFront3 by a Japanese company called Access. A list of phones with the NetFront browser in it is available here: http://www.access-us-inc.com/Prod_Deploy_Mobile.html in theory my application should work with most of those phones...
Ive discovered that the web browser built into the NEC e616v supports xhtml and also javascript! :) which means you could write applications for it using javascript. The browser is called "NetFront 3" and its by a japanese company called Access.
It seems the only way to get the javascript/html files onto the phone is to email them to your 3mail account though, and then you need to goto your 3mail account via the phones browser, i.e click the triangle button, then goto the services page and then to the mail page. The reason for this is if you try reading your mail from the phone's built in mail client, which you can access by selecting the "msg" option then 3mail, it wont let you read any .htm or .html file attachments, but if you read your 3mail via the phones "web" browser, you can view html attachments :D
Anyone got any ideas for some useful javascript applications that would come in handy and that dont need to access the internet outside of 3's walled garden?
UPDATE I forgot to mention the browser also supports animated gifs :)
Someone should do a page of all the things it supports, or if someone could get a technical document outlining the browsers capabilities that would be v.cool too :) If anyone knows any more info on other cool things the browser supports, let me know. I have tried mailing a .jar and a .jad file and also a .swf file to my 3mail account, but it seems to block you from opening these types of files.
Further Update Ive written a javascript application for this phone, that lets you browse the web outside 3's walled garden. You can read all about it here
Yet Another Update Ive written another application that lets you interface your 3 phone with GenieTexter the free SMS sending application. Which means its possible to send free SMS from your phone. You can read all about it here
The 3 mobile network in the UK have for reasons best known to themselves, only given access to their own website content on their customers 3G phones. Im sure you would all agree that this is pretty lame.
Well i just thought up a way around it. Its not perfect but it does work, basically it involves sending your requests for webpages via email to a service that grabs that page and then emails it back to you.
This article at Evolt, lists a couple of services of the type I am talking about.
A major selling point of getting a 3 phone at the moment is that it offers free email sending and receiving at present, though this is going to end on 1st December 2004 according to the latest price guide posted on the three website. So till then, I guess this is the only way that 3 phone users can access the multi splendoured delights that the internet offers (well text content only anyway hehe).
Im going to carry on testing out this idea, and will post back the results here. If you have any ideas or experience of doing this already, please let me know, cheers.
Steeev
UPDATE I tried out the web2email service offered by agora@dna.affrc.go.jp as mentioned in the Evolt article and it worked extremely well! The only downside is of course the delay between sending the request and getting the email back, and the other being that theres no automatic notification when an email arrives. Anyway useful for doing google searches! And grabbing news headlines from a website? maybe grabbing an RSS feed? any more useful ideas?
FURTHER UPDATE I tried emailing a html web page as an attachment to my 3mail account and found that although you cannot read it in the MSG -> 3mail section, (when you try and read the html attachment, you get an error message saying X Attention Unable to open file. This type of file cannot be read on your handset. Though if you open the phones browser then goto Services and then to Mail, opent the mail and you can view the html attachments ok. Once youve selected the mail with the attachment, you need to click "Attachments" and then click on the file and then download it to view it. Nice :)
I wonder if the e616v's browser can also view web archive files, that would be handy, cos then you could mail a web archive of a site to your phone and browse the site that way. hmmmm need to do some further testing i guess :)
The 3 mobile network in the UK have for reasons best known to themselves, only given access to their own website content on their customers 3G phones. Im sure you would all agree that this is pretty lame.
Well i just thought up a way around it. Its not perfect but it does work, basically it involves sending your requests for webpages via email to a service that grabs that page and then emails it back to you.
This article at Evolt, lists a couple of services of the type I am talking about.
A major selling point of getting a 3 phone at the moment is that it offers free email sending and receiving at present, though this is going to end on 1st December 2004 according to the latest price guide posted on the three website. So till then, I guess this is the only way that 3 phone users can access the multi splendoured delights that the internet offers (well text content only anyway hehe).
Im going to carry on testing out this idea, and will post back the results here. If you have any ideas or experience of doing this already, please let me know, cheers.
Steeev
UPDATE I tried out the web2email service offered by agora@dna.affrc.go.jp as mentioned in the Evolt article and it worked extremely well! The only downside is of course the delay between sending the request and getting the email back, and the other being that theres no automatic notification when an email arrives. Anyway useful for doing google searches! And grabbing news headlines from a website? maybe grabbing an RSS feed? any more useful ideas?
FURTHER UPDATE I tried emailing a html web page as an attachment to my 3mail account and found that although you cannot read it in the MSG -> 3mail section, (when you try and read the html attachment, you get an error message saying X Attention Unable to open file. This type of file cannot be read on your handset. Though if you open the phones browser then goto Services and then to Mail, opent the mail and you can view the html attachments ok. Once youve selected the mail with the attachment, you need to click "Attachments" and then click on the file and then download it to view it. Nice :)
I wonder if the e616v's browser can also view web archive files, that would be handy, cos then you could mail a web archive of a site to your phone and browse the site that way. hmmmm need to do some further testing i guess :)
I just figured out how to connect my PC to my my NEC e616v mobile phone so that i can send and receive my 3mail directly on my PC.
Firstly in order to actually check your 3mail account on your PC you need to connect your PC to your phone, i believe you can do this via Bluetooth as well as USB, though im not 100% sure, as i dont have a bluetooth adaptor for my PC, in my case I connected it via USB. To do this you need to just put the cd that came with your phone into your PCs drive and then plug your phone into the usb socket. Then just go through the hardware wizard, you need to install 4 drivers, so just follow the wizard, and it should install them all for you.
Once youve installed the drivers, heres the instructions on setting up a connection to your phone for Windows 2000 users, it should be similar for other windows operating systems too.
1) Go to Start/Settings/Network and Dialup Connections
2) Make New Connection
3) Click Next
4) Dial up to the Internet
5) I want to setup my internet connection manually
6) I connect through a phone line and modem
7) In the drop down box, select "NEC 616 USB Modem"
8) Click Next
9) Untick the "use area code and dialling rules" box
10) Enter *99# as the telephone number
11) Click Next
12) Enter your 3 mobile number as the username and leave the password blank
13) Click Next
14) you will be warned that you havent entered a password, ignore the warning and continue
15) Give your new connection a name, something like "NEC e616v" should do
16) Click Finish And thats the connection to your phone setup.
17)Make sure your USB cable is plugged into your phone
18) Go back to the "Network and Dialup Connections" window and double click your new connection.
19) After a few seconds you should now be connected to your phone.
20) Follow the instructions which ive quoted below, originally posted by Dimitri Sampson in the 3gnewsroom forum on how to setup your 3mail in outlook/express or whatever IMAP compatible mail client you have on your PC.
-------------------------------------------
Once you are connected, you can startup Outlook or your mail program and put in the following settings :-IMAP Server - imap.three.co.uk
SMTP Server- smtp.three.co.uk
Username - your email name (e.g. dmitris)
Password - your password (the one you setup when you first started 3mail on your phone, usually a 4 digit pin password)with this you can pull in your emails and any voicemails down to your PC.
21) you can also browse the walled garden content in your web browser, though i seem to be having a problem getting this working, i can see the pages, but i cant seem to click the links, if anyone can figure out whats wrong please let me know. Anyway to get to the walled garden content enter the following URL http://mobile.three.co.uk/hb/vtb/HutchKey/ into your PCs web browser while you still have a connection to your NEC e616v phone or try this one http://mobile.three.co.uk//hb/3g/uk/vtb/grid/live which shows you the services page.
Enjoy exploring :) And if you find out how to get the webpages to work, please let me know... Cheers,
Steeev
I recently purchased a Nokia 7600 and an NEC e616v, both phones are on the 3 network and have quite similar specifications. I have been comparing them, and i must say I havent used the 7600 much, as i only really switched it on to unlock it. The phone is too weird looking for my liking and the keypad isnt conducive to txting, anyway heres a few comparison points i have noticed:
7600 has a full bluetooth implementation, so can connect to any bluetooth device
e616v can only connect to bluetooth headset devices, though it can also act as a modem over bluetooth.
Both phones come with a USB cable, for transferring files such as video, ringtones, and mp3s to and from your pc. You cant transfer java games to the NEC phone, but apparently you can do this with the Nokia.
7600 has a full XHTML web browser, though you cant browse the internet, just 3's website.
e616v has a full xhtml browser too, but you cant make full use of it because you can only browse the content on the 3 website, you cant access the internet at all.
7600 has got a very intuitive user interface - great usability! (talking about the menu system etc, not the fiddly keypad)
e616v user interface is a little bit confusing, but not too bad, doesnt take too long to get used to it.
e616v can do video phone calls, and you can also record short video clips.
7600 cannot do video phone calls, though you can record short video clips.
e616v has 2 cameras! one on the front and one on the back
7600 has just one camera on the back.
7600 has got 32Meg in built ram.
e616v has got just 19Meg in built ram.
7600 has no memory card expansion port
e616v has a memory stick duo memory card expansion port which means you could fit more mp3s, photos and videos on it.
e616v comes with 2 batteries (1 heavy duty and 1 slim one) though i guess this is due to the poor battery performance, the heavy duty battery sticks out a bit and makes the phone look ugly, and the slim battery doesnt last very long at all.
7600 comes with 1 battery, i have heard that the battery lasts longer than the NEC one.
7600 keypad is really fiddly, absolutely rubbish for entering text messages or emails, practically impossible to use with a single hand.
e616v has a standard mobile phone keypad, so easy to enter texts with a single hand, and better for people with big hands, the nokias buttons are a bit on the small side, and really close together.
7600 has an infra red port
e616v doesnt have infra red port
7600 has a full java MIDP implementation, which means you can freely download java applications and games.
e616v has a closed off Java implementation, which means you cant download java apps and games freely, and have to pay to download them.
7600 comes with 2 games built in
e616v doesnt come with any games
e616v has a light on the front for the camera, great for taking pictures in the dark, the light can also be used as a torch, if you hold down one of the volume buttons on the side of the phone for a couple of seconds, the light comes on!
7600 doesnt have a light for the camera, though it is supposed to have a low light camera setting.
7600 has much better sounding ringtones, and uses standard midi files, i believe you can also even use mp3s as ringtones!
e616v you can use midi files as ringtones, there is a limit of 20k on the size of the midi files you can use, you cant use mp3s as ringtones.
7600 is easy to unlock to allow u to use different network's sim cards (you can unlock your 7600 and a whole load of other phones here: http://www.trycktill.com/eng/
e616v isnt so easy to unlock to allow u to use different network's sim cards
7600 comes with some cool stereo earphones, which look quite similar to ipod ones and also double as a handsfree kit
e616v comes with a crappy mono earphone hands free kit.
e616v the quality of video recorded with the camera seems quite good
7600 the quality of video recorded with the camera seems a bit "blocky"
e616v can download a video and save it for playback at a later date, or it can stream the video file in "real time"
7600 can only stream video files, it cannot download and save video files
e616v comes with GPS
7600 doesnt have GPS
7600 flat and open design doesnt give any protection from scratching or damage, or from dialling people when the phones in your pocket,
e616v is a clamshell design (which means you cant accidentally dial people by mistake, when something rubs against the phone), and the phones screen is also protected from damage
anyone else got anything to add?
as to which one is better i cant really decide, i am thinking of selling one of them, but cant make my mind up. really i would like to keep both, as they both have features that i really like, ideally i would like to create a frankenstein machine with the best features from both phones... now where did i put my hacksaw LOL
steeev
*UPDATE* I recently took my trusty NEC e616v on holiday with me to Japan, and was pleased to find out that the phones charger works fine on the japanese power supply, even though its completely different to the UK's. All i needed was a plug adapter which i picked up in the airport for around £3.50.
Whilst on holiday I also noticed one majorly disappointing feature of the phone, and that is that you can only store 100 photos no matter how much memory the phone has remaining, this was extremely annoying. At first i thought i would be able to remedy the problem by buying a memory card for the phone, but alas after installing it I found I still couldnt take any photos as the 100 images limit had been reached on the phone. Talk about crap! I believe there is also a limit on storing only 100 video clips on the phone too. How lame is that? Luckily I havent reached the limit on storing videos yet. It wouldnt have been a problem if I had taken the cdrom with the drivers and transfer program along with me, as i would have been able to transfer all the images onto a pc, and then deleted all the photos off the phone, allowing me to take photos again, but unfortunately i forgot to take it with me, and i had no luck in finding the transfer software online. Oh well, for anyone else looking for the transfer software and drivers for this phone, see my recent blog entry on the subject.
Further Update Someone on the 3g forum has posted a way to get round the 100 image limit on the e616v phone. More info can be found here.
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