How To ephraim on 05 Mar 2007 10:40 am
Tips and tricks
UMTS only
A friend of mine called me on fring a few days ago and said he had found something that I might want to share with the entire fring community. He’s based in the UK and since he is sometimes forced to use a GPRS connection and not 3G, his fring calls are not as good as he would like them to be.
On some networks, you may be able to improve your connection by changing the settings on your handset from using fring in dual mode to UMTS/3G only. To change this on your Nokia handset, simply go to Tools -> Settings -> Network. Under the ‘Network Mode‘ tab, change it to ‘UMTS‘ or 3G instead of GSM or dual mode.
I’ve tested it here and it seems to be working just fine… no more GPRS for me.
There is however a disclaimer for this tip: My friend is based in Europe and we’ve heard from a few more users that this tweak of the settings helped them get a better voice quality. However, if the 3G deployment is not so good in your country - you might have to skip this tip. But you know what? It doesn’t cost you anything to try. Right?
How do you make a fring shortcut on your standby screen?
As a musician I know that if I have my guitar locked in the closet and not on its stand, I can go on a few days without playing a note. What does that have to do with fring? It’s a metaphor! See?
Today we will learn how to make a shortcut for fring so you won’t have to go through 4 menus before you get it started.
So how do you do that?
It depends…
If you love fring and would like to place a shortcut on your Left/Right softkey, go to ‘Tools‘ -> ‘Settings‘ -> ‘Phone‘ -> ‘Standby Mode‘. Go to the Left/Right selection key menu item and choose fring from the list. At the same place you can choose whether you’d like fring to start every time you hit the Left/Right/Up/Down joystick.
If you really love fring and would like to place a shortcut on one of the 5 applications on the top of your active standby screen, go to ‘Tools‘ -> ‘Settings‘ -> ‘Phone‘ -> ‘Standby Mode‘ (make sure you have ‘Active standby’ mode set to ‘On’), click on ‘Active standby apps‘ and choose the exact location you’d like to use.
Until next time… keep on fringing in the free world.
on 06 Mar 2007 at 2:29 pm 1.chernics said …
I’ve tried this (I ‘forced’ it via a hidden setting on my N70). It didn’t work nicely since (as you disclaim), 3G deployment isn’t amazing where I live.
The good: The phone automatically preferences 3G signals over GPRS, so in areas where you’d normally get GPRS only, you now start to get 3G.
The bad: Keep in mind the reason the phone sometimes preferences GPRS is that 3G signal is weak in your current position. Thus, it consumes more phone power to maintain the connection, so BATTERY LIFE MAY GO DECREASE. The real problem, however, is that when a 3G signal can’t be found at all, UMTS-only mode causes the phone to lose ALL signal! (at least on my N70). That means you go out of contact even for normal mobile calls as well.
The moral: try it for a few days and monitor signal; if you find your phone loses GSM signal periodically as a result, disable the seting.
Thanks for amazing Fring!! ADD VIBRATE!
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on 08 Mar 2007 at 8:23 pm 2.Igor Polyakov said …
An exellent tip! I love your service!
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on 11 Mar 2007 at 9:25 am 3.Ankit said …
Unrelated to post, but thanks for the great service provided by you. Thanks to you i can conveniently call my brother who lives far away just like i would call anyone else. Thanks for making my life a little bit better.
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on 13 Mar 2007 at 4:32 pm 4.shipu said …
dear fring,
i would like to download the fring ..but i really did not understand how it is really works…do i need cell phone to download it..and is it only works in moblie ..also how do i connect through fring to another phone..can i make international call for free with fring software..
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on 18 Mar 2007 at 5:34 pm 5.Thrivedan said …
I think Fring is simply great! I would love to see an improvement in the audio volume. I find it too low on my N80. Also an incall SIP number setup will be a superb feature. Thanks for your overall good service.
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on 30 Apr 2007 at 12:57 pm 6.brdkos said …
to chernics> I’m just wondering how to change network mode to “UMTS only” in N70 ? I don’t know any hidden setting or the way to show hidden settings. I have only Dual mode and GPRS only in Network mode. Can you explain this please ? THX
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