6131: MMS Video messaging now works!

With all this talk that MMS is working fine on the 6131's I decided to try to send myself a video clip and I can confirm that it was delivered without problems. This is something I could never do before.

Also, thanks for Nokia Software Updater, please welcome me to the 6.10 family!

 

Dictionary App? What's that?

I have found some differences on 6.10, some of which had already been mentioned in the other thread. One of the first things I've noticed is that when I close the flip, the standby light on the outside screen doesn't stay on as it used to. Now it will dim quicker and go completely off after about 30 seconds and then a few seconds after that the display turns monochrome. That's about half the time it used to take.

Also, pressing the power button while the keys were locked caused the screen to light up. Not anymore. You have to open the flip. If you don't lock your keys, then that's not a problem since the screen lights up with any of the side keys.

When connecting the charger, the screen used to light up. Not anymore.

After you had closed the flip and the screen was dimmed, the screen used to light up again when the auto keypad lock was automatically activated. Not anymore. It stays dark.

Not a big deal to me, but I guess all these changes might increase battery life a bit.

Now I also noted that the "General Indicators" panel of the Active Standby screen actually does something! On the previous firmware, it never displayed anything. Now, it displays the date.

The station name on the outside display now works fine. It used to show the first station name only regardless of which station was tuned.

I also noticed the Music Player fast-forwards in intervals of 6 seconds instead of 5. I wish it would speed up the longer you press it.

I hope they fixed the bug with transfering via Bluetooth to BlackBerrys. I know they fixed it with Motorola in 5.5.

 

You're right. It works like that for me too. The way the backlight behaves now looks more like a patch rather than a change in programming. If you notice, when you plug in the charger, the light quickly flashes but stays off. It seems like the code to make the light turn on is still the same, they are just telling it to power off right away because it is easier to program it that way rather than changing the whole thing. I have a programming background in several languages and I know that looks like bad programming.

I don't recall that "Lock keypad" command being there. I guess that's new.

I also noticed today that when you get a message, the light doesn't stay on as long as it used to. But the flashing reminder for missed calls, and messages seems to work the same.

 

I've been with the 6.10 firmware for a few days now and I've been paying attention to the battery life. I have not seen any improvements whatsoever.

I've also noticed that when charging the phone, the battery icon in the external screen is no longer there when in monochrome mode. A minor thing, but it was nice to know the phone was done charging without opening the flip.

On the positive side, I've noticed the phone is slightly quicker for some things, such as opening folders, loading apps, etc. but it is slower when lighting up the main display when I open the flip. There was one instance where it got stuck (the display never came up when I opened the flip) and I closed the flip and opened it again to get the screen to come up. This never happened with the 5.5 firmware.

So I've been finding that the 6.1 is not even worth the upgrade. I just don't see the advantage. While it fixed some bugs that were less than noticeable, it has introduced some other bugs that didn't exist before.

 

I always charge my phone while it is on. In fact, I never turn it off unless I have to remove the SIM card or something like that. So I remember that while charging the battery charing icon was there in the monochrome screen and that was with the phone on. It's nice to know that when it is off it will show.

About the screen staying in the dark, I can be a little more specific about that now. If you leave the flip open until the screen goes dark completely, you can make it "wake up" by pressing any key. It used to wake up instantly upon pressing a key on the 5.5 firmware. Now it takes about one second after the keypress to wake up. If you look at it carefully, it is not the backlight that has the delay, it is the display itself, so it is a screen rendering delay. I've only had it once get stuck in the dark. It hasn't happened again. Also, I have not had any reboots yet in this 6.1 firmware. I had some reboots back in 3.7, but 5.5 was better in that sense as I had less reboots. But 6.1 seems to be behaving even better about that. Or perhaps I haven't had it long enough to see a reboot yet.

 

So how did you downgrade back to 5.5 if you can't downgrade? And how do you get US number grouping? That's something I've never seen in this phone.

 

One thing I like about the 6.10 is that the music player remembers the music source to be the MicroSD card even if you take the card out and put it back in. Previously, on 5.5, if I removed the MicroSD card, the phone would automatically change the music source to be the internal memory even if you didn't use the music player in the interim, so after I put the card back in the phone and then open the player I would have to reselect the MicroSD as the music source every time I took my card out to add/change the MP3s on it. It's now a minor annoyance that's gone.

However, I do find 6.10 to be slower to display the main screen every time I open the flip. Other than that it seems the same speed as 5.5 for the most part, with the exception of certain things like opening folders (Gallery, MicroSD card) which seem slightly faster on 6.10.

 

Happy Birthday to your 6131 Charlyee! LOL! Is he learning to walk?

Mine is not a year old until November.

Multitasking is a feature I really miss from the Motorola UI. I used to be able to leave Java Apps running in the background for copy and paste operations, view text messages, open URLs, etc. No such luck with the 6131. Just about the only things that can be run in the background are the Music Player and the FM Radio, but sometimes if I am using Google Maps and a call comes in, I can answer it and hang up, but that's about it. I can't look at the phonebook or anything unless I exit Google Maps first.

Another shortcoming I find is the lack of internal memory on the 6131. I have to constantly delete old ringtones and pictures to free up memory.

I haven't decided if my next phone will be the V3xx or the RAZR2, but it will be one of those.

 

Yeah, I have a MicroSD 1GB....I'm planning on getting the 2GB. My pictures, videos, music, etc. default save to the MicroSD card. Even Java apps I have them all running from the MicroSD card. The problem is with ringtones and wallpapers that its better to store them in the phone's internal memory but you quickly run out of memory if you don't keep an eye on it. An MP3 64kbps mono ringtone that is 30 seconds long is about 250 kb in size. That means with the phone's free memory of about 2 mb, you can only store like 8 MP3 ringtones. But also, it's not good to fill up the phone's memory completely. You have to leave some space for your text messages, MMS, etc. plus any other alert sounds you may want, so that means you can only effectively store less than 8 full music 30-sec ringtones. I know you can compress them more than that, but then they sound bad. I find anything less than 64kbps sounds poor for a phone ringtone. I've tried WMA, MP4 and AAC (since the 6131 supports them too) and they sound just as bad at less than 64kbps. My voicemail is set to answer at 30 seconds so my music ringtones have to last 30 seconds otherwise they loop before the voicemail answers.

If you use wallpapers and ringtones stored in the MicroSD card, you lose your settings everytime you take the MicroSD card out if the phone is on. The phone will revert back to the default Nokia ring and wallpaper/theme. The solution would be to power off the phone before removing the card and insert it before powering it on. However, it is very easy to accidentally forget this.