What To Do First When You Get Your Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic

As promised yesterday, here are some tips to maximise the value you will get out of your brand spanking new Nokia Xpressmusic 5800.

1. do a “hard reset” by pressing “*#7370#”.  The phone will ask for an unlock code – it’s “12345″.  This is necessary to get rid of potential certificate problems.  Trust me, this works, and the certificate problem is real.  Also, check your system settings – “Settings” – “Application mgr.” – “Installation sett” – “Software installation – All”, “Online certificate check – Off”, and “Default web address – None”.
2. if you plan on getting permanent freewares off the net, you will need to one of two things (either step 3 or 4 below, or both).  If you have lots of cash to throw spend, ignore steps 3 and 4.
3. go to this site, and click on the highlighted area in Figure 1 below to register an account with your phone’s IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number.  Press *#06# to get your phone’s IMEI number.  Fill in necessary details as per Figure 2 below.  A confirmation message like Figure 3 will appear.  Proceed to enter your phone’s IMEI as in Figure 4.  This is required for the site to generate a certificate to sign your applications with.  Once done, quit the site – it will take around a day to generate your certificate and you will come back later to submit unsigned applications for signing so that it can be installed on your phone.
4. go to this webpage, and register.  Then read the tutorial on that page, and follow the instructions to get your own certificate.  You will get your own certificate and key file in at most two days.  Keep these files in a safe place; don’t lose them or you’ll have to request another set.

With step 4, you can now sign any unsigned application which refuses to install on your 5800 by signing it with your own certificate.  The signing program is called “SignSIS“, and has a nice GUI interface, but unfortunately only available on Windows.  Place the .cer and .key files you obtained from step 4 above in the same directory as the SignSIS program, and sign away!  Then send the file over Bluetooth to your phone from your PC/notebook, go to your phone’s inbox, and install!  Simple as that.

If you followed step 3 above, and a day has passed (or you can continue checking, who knows, the site may generate your certificate quickly!), then continue following the steps below to get your unsigned application signed by the website.

• Go back to the website in step 3 above, and click on “Log in” as in Figure 5 below.
• Complete your submitted details as in Figure 6 below.
• If the website has successfully created your certificate, you will see Figure 7 below.  Proceed to the next step.
• And here’s where the fun begins.  Choose the unsigned .sis file you downloaded from wherever by clicking the “Choose…” button, and click the blue button.  You must submit in .sis/sisx format, not in a compressed format like .zip or .rar.
• Be patient while the file you selected uploads to the server, and while the server signs it and provides you a download link with your signed file.
• If successful, you will see a screen similar to Figure 9 below.  See the line of text which says “some-gibberish-numbers_signed.sis“?  That’s your file – signed with a certificate which allows the file to be installed on your phone!  Download it, then send it to your phone as usual, and install it!  Done!  Reports from the web say that this is a very reliable method of signing unsigned applications.

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Figure 9

So, now that you have done these steps, you can practically install anything on your phone, whether freeware, shareware, nagware, payware, “permanent freeware” (ahem), anyware on your phone.  If you install “permanent freeware” stuff of unknown origin, do not blame me if this bricks your phone, or results in you having to hard reset your phone thereby losing all data on it!  Use at your own risk.

What software do I recommend that you install?  Well, there are a few, while we wait for the major ones to be updated to support touch.

1. y-browser
2. Google Maps (try searching for house numbers, it’s way coooooool!)
3. depending on your needs, maybe some epocware or smartphoneware stuff

Some quick notes to clear some doubts on why we do this and some warnings:

1. the latest Symbian firmwares/operating system is not hackable to allow us to install unsigned software like in previous versions.  The Nokia 5800 is one of them.  All software must come signed as a security measure.
2. giving your IMEI away online is not normally recommended.  People can use this to call up your service provider and say that their phone with your IMEI number has been stolen to play a prank on you.  The service provider will then block your IMEI from being used on the network and you have to go through some trouble to prove that you are the rightful owner.  But playing this prank is easier said than done.  Also, IMEI blocking is almost always never done in Malaysia (it’s a paid service, and cheapskate Malaysians won’t pay for this service anyway, and I’m not even sure whether this has been implemented yet).  Apart from this scenario, I don’t know how your IMEI can be used in other evil ways.

So what else do you guys want?  Links?  Haha…that will depend on my mood and time constraints  But that’s a topic for another blog post…

Drop a comment to say whether this has helped you or not to let mek now whether spending time writing this rubbish is worth my while in the future

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