Well this is some good news for all of us MGN users!

Thanks a lot to both Sean and Abatis.

Lorenzo

Sean,

I wish you all the best and, even if it might sound trite and useless, I totally second your decision. Family comes before everything else.

That said I wish to thank you for MGN and for all that MGN means/has meant for us Mpx200 users over the years.

I have a huge amount of WM-smartphones-related bookmarks on my browser but, from a statistical point of view I can affirm that I have always found the best, more knowledgeable, more useful informations on this site, every time the need for an advice, a pointer, an opinion, a confirmation has arised.

I still remember when I first dropped on this site in May 2004; I had got my Mpx200 for just one or two days and knew almost nothing about it. Thanks to MGN, to its moderators and its users I almost immediately became a "power user". MGN even helped me extending the phone's lifespan as I came to know about the 2003 and 2005 roms in here, before the news were out anywhere else.

What can I say? Thanks again Sean. I now am looking forward for your unvaluable contribution as a moderator.

By the way: Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that you have decided to sell MGN on the same day I finally made my mind up and bought a new smartphone to replace my still-perfectly-working-but old-and creacky Mpx200?

Are you sure you've been modifying the homescreen correctly? Refer to this thread http://www.mobilegadgetnews.com/index.php?showtopic=10632 in order to check if the code you erased from your homescreen's xml matches with the one you effectively had to get rid off.

Second thing I can tell you is that my \phone\channels\enable channels option is still flagged each time I power the phone on. But I do not receive any messages anymore. The only other thing that comes to my mind is that you could try to flag the option "receive channels list" too, as I did.

Let me know if that solves your problem.

HTH

Lorenzo

Hi Smeg et all,

I don't know anything about the SMT5600 as I never even had the occasion of laying my hands on one but, as far as I'm concerned I can say that the day I got my Mpx200 is the day I made one of the best deals of my life

I still remember that day... I had recently bought a beautiful (but awfully big, heavy and clumsy) iPaq 5600. Then I saw the Mpx200 which had just showed up on the shelves and immediately fell in love with it.
As I already had been shelling a good load of bucks on the counter for the ppc device I could not afford (or rather... wife would have killed me had I done that), to get this one more gadget. I so started roaming around all the italian cellular-centric sites, searching for somebody who would trade his Mpx200 for my ppc.
It took me months but I finally bumped into a guy which was looking for a pda with a big screen as he was not very young anymore and was so not comfortable with the Mpx200's diminutive display. I closed the deal very quickly and in a matter of days I received my almost never used Windows Mobile 2002 powered phone.

Since then this little thing has become the essential companion of my everyday life both at home and at work. It's been undergoing two major overhauls (from WM2002 to 2003 and now from 2003 to 2005); it's almost four years old and there are a good load of scratches and bruises on it's hide that prove it.
Nonetheless it's still my workhorse and does everything I need it to do plus a few more things. It obviously lacks some features that now seem to be all the fuss like BT and WiFi but, as I never used any of these options and don't need to I don't feel I'm missing anything. I also am one of those people who think that the lack of a camera on a phone is a plus so I'm as happy as can be.

That said lately I have been hunting for a replacement to this phone because, as I said, my trusty old friend is starting to show its age: The back cover is almost open on one side as two of the retainer plastic lips got broken. I cannot use the phone as an mp3 player because the right channel blew up so the audio signal will just come out from the left earbud. The sim card retainer lip got broken too, I had the whole phone's plastics replaced and it broke again so I'm now back to having a folded piece of paper under my battery. The display's hinges are still doing good when the flip is open but when it's closed the upper part of the phone will move as if it's stuck to the rest of the body with scotch tape. But those are minor issues for a phone that has been used as this one: scratched by keys and coins in the pockets of my jackets, squashed by my whole weight in my trousers back pockets, it has been falling on the ground from considerable heights three or four times, it even has had to cope with my wife's fury twice, thus getting hurled to the floor (!).
It has survived all this and still is here to claim its sturdiness

The fact is that so far the only viable option I could find is the Mpx220 which I really do not like as I am convinced that it is in no way superior to what I already have. On the contrary! Some months ago I wrote in this here forum that back in Italy the price tag of the Mpx200 is (still) higher than that of the Mpx220... there must be a reason for such a peculiar situation.
For what is about other phones they are much too expensive (e.g. Htc universal, iMate Jam), too big (put the name of your favorite pda phone here) or too ugly (candybar phones in general).

I consequently am still waiting for a phone as sexy, as small, robust, durable and reltively cheap as the Mpx200 to come out but I fear that I won't see it so I will stick to what I have.

Last but not least show me another phone which has got such a large community of affectionate followers as this one after such a long time. You can't 'cause it does not exist so what's left to say? Long live the Mpx200! And in ten years time when we will all still be here discussing the minor problems related to the flashing of our dear old Mpx200 with the latest release of the WIM050 (Windows Intergalactic Mobile 2050) all the other phones will have been left long before gathering dust on some forgotten corner of our houses.

You're absolutely right!

I have done what you suggest yesterday night. Today the "enable channels" option is still enabled but as it seems I'm not receiving messages anymore.... so far so good!

It's strange and interesting how different persons will have different problems with the same phone and same rom.

I have been reinstalling my "old" Opera browser after flashing my Mxp200 with WM5 and went through the procedure flawlessly. Moreover, while under 2003 the browser took forever to load, it now is up and running in no time....

On the contrary, I can now launch the program and go get a coffee. When I get back Fizz Traveller (which was fast as ^*&& under 2003) will perhaps be running...

Mapopolis: It took it quite some time to load under 2003, it now is blazing fast under Wm5.

MetrO: It was very fast under 2003, it now is sluggish at best under Wm5.

I wonder what the reason for these behavior can be and, the apparent sequentiality of the situation (fast apps under 2003 have become slow, slow apps under 2003 have become fast), seems to suggest that there is a workaround to speed up all the apps. I don't know where the solution might lie though...

Hi all,

This never happened before, it is happening now that I have flashed the phone with WM5:

Under> \settings\phone\channels I have the option to flag/unflag the "enable channels" option which, as you may know, are the "sms on-demand" messages that the network sends your way and that can contain stock quotes, weather forecast, soccer matches results etc.

The problem is that under WM5 if I uncheck the "enable channels" option, each time I power off the phone, at next power on the option will be flagged again (!)

I so will keep receiving unwanted messages from the network until I unselect the above option again, just to begin receiving messages all over again at next power on... this is starting to get on my nerves as I get 12 to 15 useless unwelcomed, unneeded and unwanted messages every day....

I have tried to get in touch with my carrier (Vodafone) but they have told me that this option is not enabled by them, this function is embedded directly in the GSM network and it is carrier-independent. They so cannot disable this for me.

Consequently, I'm posting here in order to ask if somebody knows where I should put my hands inside the phone's registry in order to disable this darn setting once and for all.

Thanks in advance!!

Lorenzo

I think I can definitely confirm you're right on this one:

Under WM5 there is just one way of answering a call which is that of opening the phone flip; that said as far as I'm concerned I can still see the caller's ID on my external screen when a call comes in.

The above demonstrates that the WM5 port we're using is a pretty stripped down one. Nonetheless all my kudos go to the one(s) which succeeded in letting us Mpx200 users gain access to this new version of the smartphone OS. I can still not compel myself from marvelling at the thought that I'm sporting the only smartphone which has gone through two major overhauls (2002>2003 - 2003>2005) and still stays on the bleeding edge after almost four years from its first appearance on the shelves.

HTH

Lorenzo

Yup! I found that out this morning by accident. I was going to power the phone off when my thumb flipped off the power button so I just gave it a fast squeeze and... there appeared the menu containing the "airplane mode" settings.

Thanks all the same!

Lorenzo

Good morning and a happy new year to everybody.

In the end I decided to take the leap of faith and upgraded from WM03 to Wm5. Here are my 2 cents after one day of use:

- Flashing was a breeze. I went through the whole process in less than 50 minutes. No problems at all.

- First thing I noticed upon powering on the phone was the lack of a file manager. As advised in this forum I loaded Resco Explorer and the problem was solved. Another piece of software that is not embedded in this release is a battery/memory meter. In this case too I did as many other MGN users and downloaded Resco's Battery & Memory in order to implement such missing feature.
Nonetheless I feel that this OS is crippled at best. It lacks many important functions I had become accustomed to under 2003 and, I overall find I have much less control on my phone now.
An example: Where are the settings to switch the "airplane mode" on/off? If I try to press and hold the "home" button to get this function, as I did withWM2003 the phone will just freeze. No sign of the "airplane settings" anywhere else...

I will keep on using it to see if it's just me or if this WM5 really is a no go.

- Power on/switch off.
My SD card might be a fast one because the phone does not seem to be any slower than before in switching on/shutting off.

- Radio strength and battery life.
While the majority of comments in this forum are positive I do not feel that my Mpx200's battery life has improved together with the signal strength: While under 2003 I never had a signal problem now I have had some:
@Yesterday evening I called home while I was outside and could barely hear what my wife was telling me as the signal was very blurry and full of static interferences.
@At home I never got more than 3-4 signal bars where I'd usually get full signal strength.
@This morning upon entering my office (yes.... I'm working....) I took the phone out from the jacket's pocket and noticed that the "no service" signal was displayed on the phone's screen. While this is obvious because I had just exited the subway station where there is no cell coverage, it is nonetheless not normal as between my office and the station there are 200 metres which are more than enough for my phone to pass from "no service" to full signal strength in normal conditions.

My impression is that the phone has become much less sensitive to the signal fluctuations as it seems to not be any longer able to gather signal as soon as any is available, as it did before the upgrade.

For what is about battery life I can just say that when I powered off yesterday night the battery was 98% charged. When I switched the phone on this morning I had one bar left on the battery meter and will very soon need to recharge...

In order to try and be less "empiric" I will just let the phone discharge completely and then will plug it to the "juice" until it gets fully charged. If less than one day passes between charges it will definitely mean that the battery life under WM5 is worse than what it used to be under 2003.

- Programs.
No problem here, I have reloaded almost all my "old" software and so far haven't found a single program that won't work under 5.0

- Gui.
No doubt. WM5 is a major overhaul and it solves some little quirks that the old interface had. It seems to be somewhat more customisable than its predecessors but this is just an impression. More on that as soon as I'll be able to do some more digging.

So far this is it.
While there are some things that annoy me on this release I nonetheless cannot prevent myself from thinking that I'm toting a three years old phone which sports the latest operating system just as a a "new-off-the-shelf" device; this once more confirms that I did an excellent choice when I decided to buy my Mpx200 back then.


Have a nice first day of the new year

Lorenzo

So it's true that anything can happen at Christmas time..

I had read this thread a while back and had forgotten about it as I was under the impression that this "Magneto-on-Mpx200" thing was never going to come true.

Then came Christmas which brought some nice presents and a little money for me between other things.

As my trusty Mpx200 is almost three years old (and it's starting to show), I had almost decided to buy a new phone and was really undecided between a Nokia 6080 (yeah! Symbian, why not?) and the much-rumored Mitac Mio A701 which still has got to show up around here anyway.

After reading some things around I decided to jump into my all-times-favorite site and ask the fine people at MGN for their opinions, advices, criticisms and such.

Then I saw that this here thread was still alive and kicking so I just had a peek and... woah! I can upgrade my old geezer with WM05??!!! This is incredible!! I've never been owning a gadget with such a lifespan... I mean if I succeed in making this thing work I will be sporting the latest OS on a phone which is "informatically speaking" almost pre-historic... I'm really tempted....

But again, I roam around for comments and reactions and seem to find out that after flashing most of the WM05-powered Mpx200 users are unable to reload and run their old apps and that, the vast majority of the existing software still is not WM05-compatible. So would flashing my phone be little more than a proof of concept?

I mean, I use my Mpx200 for a load of things and flashing it in order not to be able to use it anymore would be suicidal. Hence the question:
- should I wait till all the apps I use are Wm05 compliant, then flash, upgrade the apps, load it on my "new" phone and live happily forever or,
- should I just get a new phone and perhaps flash my old fella for the sake of experimentation?

Doubt, doubt, panic...

Any authoritative (Abatis, Slacker, Sean, Smeg, Gryphon, anyone? ) comment will be deeply appreciated.

p.s.: Merry Christmas (I know... I'm late...) and a Happy New year!!

Lorenzo

No language menu?

1) Have you got Wm02 or 03?
2) While in sms texting mode try to depress * and keep it pressed. As I wrote yesterday you should get a menu containing:
1) 123
2) ABC
3) Symbols
4) <the language you currently are using on T9>
5) Languages.

Pressing the "5" button should pop another menu up which will contain the list of the languages you can use with T9. If you've got Dutch somewhere it should be in there. The rest is obvious. Just select the language of your choice and happy texting!

Keep us informed

HTH

Lorenzo

All the best!

Lorenzo

Have you tried depressing the * button while in sms-texting mode? Did the T9 menu come up? Have you checked the available languages on such menu?
If dutch is not available within the list then your only alternative is that of using the "abc" input or to flash your phone with a rom containing english and dutch so that you can select your screen language and the text imput language of your choice.

HTH

Lorenzo

First of all please check if your rom allows you to do so.
Go into Settings> Regional settings and select the language of your choice.

If however English should not be in the list of the languages you can use you then would have no alternative but to flash your phone with a rom containing such language.

A word of caution though: Flashing your phone with an english rom could result in the impossibility to turn back to chinese in case of need as, such rom could well NOT contain both chinese and english.

HTH

Lorenzo

Settings> Beam> unselect the "Receive incoming beams" option.

HTH

Lorenzo

Your question is not very clear. Each time you install a prog via ActiveSync your phone should be prompting you to install on the default directory ("storage") or on th SD card ("mounted volume"), no way to go wrong and, unless I'm completely out of my mind, there isn't even a default setting (like with pocket pcs) which will install on internal storage unless otherwise instructed.

HTH

Lorenzo

[\quote]
Is there any way to sync Outlook notes on the MPx200?
[\end quote]

Not a freeware one...

Check these shareware solutions:

- PhatNotes 4.5.3 Smartphone Edition
- SmartphoneNotes by Syncdata
- Smartnotes by Gss (which seems to not be supported/developped anymore)

HTH

Lorenzo

I have two different SD cards (one Sandisk and one oem), I have always "hot-plugged/unplugged) both cards without any problem. It might well be that your card plays the trick you describe on your phone but I wouldn't define such behavior as "normal".
At one time I used one of the cards to store my video files and had the player installed on the second one. I'd launch the prog and immediately remove the card, plug the second one on and simply ask the program to seek for the desired file on the SD; then I'd be able to watch my video without a itch. This is -according to me- what a card's normal behavior should be.

Besides I wonder if a compatibility problem between phone and card can exist (provided your SD is not a gb-or-higher one) and -in my opinion- tend to think that perhaps you've got a defective product in your hands.

Therefore my suggestion is: Test the card with another device and see if it comes up with something weird. If yes then you've found the culprit.

HTH

Lorenzo

I love my Mpx 200 and everyone who's been on this forum long enough knows it, as I never loose an occasion of bragging about how beautiful and usefull and ...whatever... it is but, this time I have to dissent.

Of course it's nice to have one small device that does it all but unfortunately the Mpx 200 s**ks big time as an Mp3 player, because of the well known "flat bass bug" and because even if coupled to a good pair of stereo phones the volume really is NOT very dynamic. I myself have been using my Mpx 200 in order to listen to music but, when I finally blew the internal plug's left channel I went out and bought an el-cheapo mp3 player which (as crappy as it might be) is magnitudes better than the mpx. That said I'll always choose my Mpx 200 over the rokr or any Sony Ericsson phone any day, but not for its Mp3 player capabilities ;D

As much as I understand the reasons why the 220 *should* be better than the 200 (BT, native WM03, newer model etc. etc.) I cannot make up my mind on buying a new smartphone. My 200 does all I want it to do plus a lot more. So, as I already have had occasion of writing many times in this forum I will keep my trusty 'ole 200 'till it melts in my very hands.

Furthermore as far as I know the 220 in fact is NOT the ideal replacement for a 200 as, many of the reviews I have been reading on this particular phone are not enthousiastic at all so, going from one so-and-so device (although mine never gave me any of the many problems that plagued the Mpx200 series) to another so-and-so device would be trying to stretch my luck a bit too far... but this is just me!

That said if there are any of you interested in buying new 220's at Eur. 229 perhaps this would be the time to organize that long-coveted trip to italy

I know that this is quite off topic but I really couldn't restrain myself from posting it:

Our fridge is going to die...

The other day upon opening it I noticed that some frost had formed on the bottom panel. As this is a "no frost" fridge I deemed such behavior strange and called the tech repair guy. In short I've been told that it's just a matter of time before the appliance definitively goes off....

Today wife and I consequently went out in order to check for refrigerators prices.

We've been in three different places and eventually have found what we were looking for.

While we were there I obviously HAD to drop an eye on the shelves dedicated to electronic gadgets and... guess what... in the first store I saw an Mpx 200 and a 220 side by side. What left me incredulous was the fact that the Mpx 220 was being sold at Eur. 229 (Usd 275) while the Mpx 200 did cost Eur 389 (Usd 468)... I was there wearing my "puzzled-and-confused" face when wife arrived and carried me away.

At the second store I sneaked away from wife while she was not looking and went at the electronic appliances department. I started looking around and almost immediately found both devices: There the Mpx 220 was selling at Eur. 299 (Usd 360) while the Mpx 200 was priced Eur. 389 same as in the first place... wtf??!

Third place. I used my "mad ninja skillz" to escape wife's vigilance and silently teleported in front of the cell phones shelves. There too I found both the 220 and the 200. Price tags were (respectively) of Eur. 299 (Usd 360) and Eur. 350 (Usd. 421).

What else? I looked around in all three stores and noticed that the other displayed phones bore prices which were aligned with what one would expect to pay for them. The only incongruent tags were the ones applied to the 200 and 220 Motos...

I ended up questioning one of the clerks which told me that as it seems the Mpx 200 is living a sort of "second renaissance" in Italy: the 220 has been a commercial failure but when it did hit the shelves everybody started selling their remaining 200 at very low prices. So people went out and bought all they could find, this generated a new wave of interest on the device and, obviously, the shops started rising the prices again while, the poor underestimated 220 went down the opposite direction... go figure...

That said I love it when facts prove that I have been doing the right choice after all

Cheers

Lorenzo

p.s.: I'm selling an used-as-new Mpx 200, ONLY Usd. 400!! Anyone? Anyone?

The first Neonode model doesn't. They had to issue a "second edition" to correct the problem

Lorenzo

Total memory: The name speaks for itself. This is the overall amount of memory available in your phone.

Program memory: The amount of the overall "Total memory" that is used by programs to install drivers, temp files, readmes, scripts, whatever.

Flash memory: The amount of "Total memory" that is used to store all data added by the user: additional programs, ringtones, images, text/video/audio files, contacts etc. etc.

Flash memory fades away quickly because each time you add a name, an address, a phone number, a picture, whatever it all goes there. This is the main reason for the which, as others wrote in their posts, it is always advisable to keep all your stuff on an SD card. This will help keeping as much free Flash Memory as possible. I - for example - have a 128mb SD card which is almost full while I still have 3mb of free Flash Memory.

As a side note please consider that even if you store all your software on the SD card, such programs will invariably install some kind of extension on the phone's memory. This also adds (in bits and pieces) bulk on the "Total memory". I consequently advise to always:
- Carefully choose what to install (no "inutilities", screen savers, backgrounds, crappy useless stuff).
- uninstall programs that are not used.
- Periodically do some "house-cleaning".

HTH

Lorenzo

I don't know if this can be of help as I squarely hate sms messages so I never use them anyway:

<http://www.mycnknow.com/infosharp.htm>

HTH

Lorenzo