Nokia thinks Ovi Suite 2.0 is almost ready for release, but they're wrong

Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0 is still in beta testing, but the people at Nokia Beta Labs believe it's almost ready to turn loose.

Nokia Ovi Suite combines the functions of Nokia PC Suite, Map Loader, and Nokia Software Updater. Unfortunately the program still runs like quicksand, and Nokia apparently has no plans to release lightweight standalone programs for simple tasks like using your phone as a modem or moving files from your PC to your phone and vice versa. If you use a netbook or other mini computer without the system resources of a fully equipped desktop machine you'll find Nokia Ovi Suite close to useless.

It's unlikely that Nokia will make a Linux version of Ovi Suite, and it doesn't work under WINE either. Nobody knows if and when Mac support will be added. Nokia believes that everybody mails with Outlook, and keeps ignoring you if you use programs like Lotus Notes or Mozilla Thunderbird.

• the new Nokia Ovi Suite UPDATE: This link is dead. And so is Symbian.

• the old Nokia PC Suite UPDATE: This link is dead. And so is Symbian.
• trick to make Nokia PC Suite let you into the system folders of your phone memory

Alternatives for Ovi Suite or PC Suite:

• Linux programs with a little bit of PC Suite functionality
• DAO4Sync, a lightweight computer-to-phone-and-back synchronisation tool
• download maps for Nokia Maps with just a web browser
• backup options for hacked phones: access points, bluetooth devices, bookmarks, calendar, cookies, messages, notes, profiles, and T9 dictionary
• ActiveFile backs up and restores SMS messages much better than PC Suite
• Contacts Transfer backs up, restores, and transfers contacts including pictures and caller groups

Nokia Ovi Suite beta test version updated but still full of bugs

Nokia Ovi Suite is meant to replace Nokia PC Suite, Map Loader, and Software Updater. It doubles as a shopping mall, because Nokia doesn't want you to ignore their music and software stores.

If all works as planned, Ovi Suite will be lighter on system resources and faster than PC Suite. But that's a long way down the road, because the latest beta test version is still slow, buggy, and crashes often even though Nokia claims many bugs were fixed.

Ovi Suite shares PC Suite's requirement for Microsoft's .NET framework. A Mac version may be available in the distant future, but it's unlikely that Nokia will make a Linux version. Nokia PC Suite does not work under WINE, and nobody knows if Ovi Suite will be WINE-compatible.

Ovi Suite requires a screen resolution of at least 1024x768 pixels, which may be a problem for netbooks, minilaptops, and other computers with small screens. But because Ovi Suite in its present state consumes way too much RAM and processor power it's useless on such computers anyway.

Thinking of using Ovi Suite to sync your mail and contacts? Then think again. Nokia believes that everybody uses Outlook. If you use Lotus Notes or Mozilla Thunderbird, Nokia pretends that you don't exist.

• the new Nokia Ovi Suite

• the old Nokia PC Suite
• trick to make Nokia PC Suite let you into the system folders of your phone memory

Alternatives for Ovi Suite or PC Suite:

• Linux programs with a little bit of PC Suite functionality
• DAO4Sync, a lightweight computer-to-phone-and-back synchronisation tool
• download maps for Nokia Maps with just a web browser
• backup options for hacked phones: access points, bluetooth devices, bookmarks, calendar, cookies, messages, notes, profiles, and T9 dictionary
• ActiveFile backs up and restores SMS messages much better than PC Suite
• Contacts Transfer backs up, restores, and transfers contacts including pictures and caller groups

Nokia PC Suite bad, Nokia Ovi Suite worse

Nokia PC Suite has been changed a bit. Out: Nokia Music Manager. In: Nokia Music. The new gateway to Nokia's music store doesn't make PC Suite better, but it adds a boatload of extra megabytes to a program that was bloated to begin with.

PC Suite is still just a collection of programs held together with bubblegum, sellotape, and a worn user interface that shows how the program got patched together over time. And PC Suite still adds lots of things to your list of autostarting programs and services, so you'll have to do a lot of tweaking if you want to keep Windows on your PC lean and mean.

Nokia Ovi Suite is supposed to be the new, faster, lightweight, integrated program that combines the functions of the old sluggish PC Suite with Nokia Map Loader and Software Updater (the program to update the firmware of your phone). Of course it doubles as a shopping mall, because Nokia wants to make sure you don't ignore their music and software stores.

The beta test version of Nokia Ovi Suite shares PC Suite's requirement for Microsoft's .NET framework, and likes to crash often. A Mac version may be available somewhere in the distant future, but there's not much chance Nokia will ever port Ovi Suite to Linux. Nokia PC Suite does not work under WINE, but maybe Ovi Suite will? As for syncing mail and contacts, Nokia still believes that everybody uses Outlook. Too bad if you use Lotus Notes or Mozilla Thunderbird instead.

Nokia Ovi Suite requires a screen resolution of at least 1024x768 pixels, which may be a problem for netbooks, minilaptops, and other computers with small screens.

• Nokia PC Suite
• Nokia Ovi Suite

• trick to make Nokia PC Suite let you into the system folders of your phone memory

For those who don't want to use PC Suite:

• Linux programs with a little bit of PC Suite functionality
• DAO4Sync, a lightweight computer-to-phone-and-back synchronisation tool
• download maps for Nokia Maps with just a web browser
• backup options for hacked phones: access points, bluetooth devices, bookmarks, calendar, cookies, messages, notes, profiles, and T9 dictionary
• ActiveFile backs up and restores SMS messages much better than PC Suite
• Contacts Transfer backs up, restores, and transfers contacts including pictures and caller groups

Nokia PC Suite and iSync still suck

Nokia PC Suite is updated to version 7.1.26.0, but don't expect anything new except for some bug fixes under the hood. The system requirements are still totally ridiculous given the limited functions of PC Suite. For example, PC Suite is still incapable of non-destructive restoration of backups: you can't make PC Suite restore a backup without losing all your new messages, notes, and calendar entries.

iSync lets you synchronise your calendar and contacts between your Nokia and your Mac. The latest version also works with the Nokia E75. And that's all. There's still no "Mac Suite" for Nokia yet, because Nokia doesn't really care about there customers if they use Mac or Linux.

PC Suite and iSync connect your computer and phone by USB and bluetooth, but not by Wi-Fi.

• Nokia PC Suite
• iSync

• Nokia PC Suite Cleaner trashes the junk that PC Suite's own uninstaller fails to remove
• force your way into Nokia's system folders
• get maps on your phone without Nokia Map Loader or PC Suite
• connection options for Linux users

Resource Cleanup, X-SMS, fix for empty contact list in PC Suite

Resource Cleanup

The resource folders of your phone (c:\resource\apps, e:\resource\apps) are full of files with names like x.r01, y.r02, z.r03, etcetera. These files contain the same stuff in different languages, and together they waste many megabytes. Not much of a problem on your memory card, but in your phone's internal memory every megabyte counts. To free up some space you can delete the files for languages you never use. For example, if you only use english, you'd keep all the *.r01 files and throw away the rest. For american english you keep *.r10. For swahili you keep the *.r84 files.

You can do the same thing with all the different language versions of the help files: *.h01, *.h02, etcetera from c:\resource\help and e:\resource\help.

And you can use a Python script to do it all for you. This script removes useless resource files from your phone's internal memory, your memory card, or both. It makes a backup for you if you want, so you can easily restore the files if you accidentally remove to much.

Resource Cleanup requires that you hack your phone to set Symbian free.

• Resource Cleanup for Python


X-SMS

X-SMS exports the messages from your phone to a text or html file, so you can save them on your computer in a format that any text editor or web browser can read.

Unfortunately X-SMS works one way only. It can save your messages, but it won't restore them back to your phone.

• X-SMS by Siraj on Mobile Castle


Nokia PC Suite empty contact list fix

If you back up your phone with Nokia PC Suite, it puts everything in a file with an .nbu extension which only PC Suite can read.

Sometimes things go wrong, and your comtact list backup stays empty.

And sometimes you may want to extract the contacts as vcard files to import them into another phone or share them with others.

Enter Nokia PC Suite empty contact list fix. You upload your .nbu backup file to this site, and it extracts your contacts and saves them as vcards, which you can download to your computer.

• Nokia PC Suite empty contact list fix

Nokia PC Suite 7.1: few new features, many bad habits

The old versions of Nokia PC Suite took forever to install, especially if you don't have Microsoft .net framework already set up on your computer, which is a heavy requirement for a program that's bloated already. Once installed, they didn't run very fast either. But since PC Suite is a necessary evil for tasks like backing up your phone, it's hard to avoid it.

The latest edition of Nokia PC Suite has the same bad habits as the previous versions, but it comes with some extra features. Nokia Communication Center is built into PC Suite 7.1. Main advantage: it's a lot easier to edit the calendar of your phone from your computer.

As usual, Nokia PC Suite adds many entries to your list of autostarting programs and services. It takes lots of tweaking to ensure that the bits and pieces of PC Suite only speak when spoken to instead of launching all by themselves.

You can access Nokia Map Loader from Nokia PC Suite, but there is another way to get maps on your phone without having to install any Nokia software on your computer. PC Suite won't let you into the system folders of your phone, but there's a method to get in anyway.

Mac? Linux? Then there's no PC Suite for you. Linux users have a few alternatives to get some of the functions of PC Suite on their computers.


Nokia PC Suite:

• Nokia PC Suite

Nokia PC Suite extras:

• Trick to make PC Suite let you into the system folders of your phone memory
• Nokia PC Suite Cleaner trashes the junk that PC Suite's own uninstaller fails to remove

Nokia PC Suite alternatives:

• Back up messages without PC Suite
• Back up calendar entries without PC Suite
• Get maps on your phone without Nokia Map Loader or PC Suite

Nokia PC Suite alternatives for Linux:

• PC Suite alternatives for Linux

Access Symbian system folders from your computer

This trick appeared last month in the modding section of the Symbian Freak forum, but because that's a members only area which is not indexed by search engines like Google I'll repeat it here.

If you connect your Symbian phone to your computer with PC Suite you can only see childproof folders like images, sounds, documents, etc.

But there is a way to get into system folders like resource, private, and sys too.

What you need:
- A hacked phone with "caps" switched off.
- MapDrives on your phone.
- PC Suite on your computer.

Step 1: Make sure Symbian on your phone is hacked and "caps" are switched off.

Step 2: Use MapDrives to assign virtual drive letters to your Symbian system folders.

Step 3: Connect your phone to your computer in PC Suite mode.

Step 4: Open "My Computer," and open Nokia Phone Browser. Do NOT open the drive with the phone symbol, and do NOT open your phone's drive from the PC Suite menu. Only use the Nokia Phone Browser from "My Computer."

Step 5: Your mapped system folders will show up as drives in the Nokia File Browser, and you'll have full access to all the files in them.

• The original post on Symbian Freak that explains this trick (signup/login required)
• MapDrives
• Nokia PC Suite
• Hack Symbian: The methods, the tools, the tricks

Make your Symbian phone talk to your Linux computer

Nokia is extremely Windows minded. That makes sense, because the market share of both Nokia and Symbian (largest shareholder: Nokia) makes Nokia a sort of Microsoft of the smartphone business, which leaves users of other operating systems out in the cold. Sure, Nokia made a few programs to provide a bit of totally inadequate Mac support, but they've never programmed a single line of code to make your Symbian S60 phone talk to Linux. Sony Ericsson? LG? Motorola? They're as guilty as Nokia.

To make things worse for Linux users, PC Suite doesn't work under WINE.

There are ways to close the communication gap a little. Wammu is like a kind of bare bones PC Suite for Linux. Unfortunately most of its features don't work with new Symbian phones.
• Wammu (front-end to Gammu)

KMobileTools and gnokii are older attempts at mimicking PC Suite functions. KMobileTools uses the Gammu engine (you're better off with Wammu), gnokii only works with old versions of Symbian, not with S60 3rd ed. or UIQ.
• KMobileTools
• gnokii

Phone Manager may turn into a Linux PC Suite, but in its current state it can only send SMSs from your computer through your phone:
• Phone Manager

Joomla! is a site with tricks to transfer files from your Nokia to your Linux computer and back, use your Nokia as a modem, and more. But prepare for lots of typing on the command line.
• Joomla!

Smoking Linux has a tutorial that explains how to transfer files from your Linux computer to your phone memory. Lots of command line typing.
• smihael

Windows users can synchronise their phone with Outlook. But who wants to use outlook anyway when you can sync your phone with Mozilla Thunderbird on your Linux box?
• bluZync: synchronise your phone with Thunderbird over bluetooth
• bluZync user forum (you may need this, because bluZync doesn't work just right out of the box and their FAQ is not ready yet)

Tuxmobil.org has a list of Linux programs for older Nokias.
• TuxMobil

There's no Linux version of Nokia Map Loader, but there's a Nokia Map Loader Alternative that works on Linux (and on any other operating system too!):
• Nokia Map Loader Alternative


Updated on February 3, 2009.

Found some missing links? Did I forget something? Feel free to leave a comment or hit the contact link at the bottom of this page.