Tips and Tricks for Nokia Phones 3

Touch Tones During Conference Calls

Applies to: 6190, 5190, 3390

As you well know, you can send touch tones during a call by either pressing keys on your keypad, or by choosing the Touch Tones options to send from a stored Phone Book entry. During a Conference Call however, you CANNOT send touch tones. This is apparently a security feature of GSM to ensure that you don't unwittingly pass along secure information to other callers in the group.

All is not lost however, since GSM supports the ability to have a private conversation with one of your Conference parties. While in the secure domain of a private chat, you can once again send touch tones.

Easy Long Distance Dialing

Applies to: Most Nokia phones, but not the 6310i for some strange reason

If you're like me, you prefer to store all of your phone book entries without the 1 in front of them. This way you can always know if you are about to make a long distance call or not. The problem is, when you do want to call long distance it's a pain in the neck to add the 1 to the number. You could either type the number in fresh, or you recall the phone book entry and edit a 1 into the beginning of the number just before you press TALK. There must be an easier way!

Well there is. Locate the menu for editing a Calling Card. Scroll down to one of the two available calling card entries and press Options. Now choose Edit from the list, at which point you will be asked to enter your phone's security code. This will be 12345 if you haven't specifically changed it. You should now see "Dialing Sequence" on the display. Press select and scroll through the various options until you find one that reads:

Prefix
+ phone no.
+ card no.

Press Select again and enter "1" as your Prefix when prompted. Press OK, then enter an asterisk as your card number when prompted. Press OK again twice to save the changes. This should take you back to the "Dialing Sequence" display. Scroll down from that and you'll get to the "Card Name" screen. Press the select button and rename this card to something meaningful, such as "Add One".

Now step back to the Menu that listed your two option calling cards and the "None" selection. Your final step is to select this newly created calling card as your default. Make sure you have the right one selected, the press Options. Now choose the Select option from the result list (you'll have to enter you're phones security code once again). The phone will momentary display "Card Ready for Use".

Okay, now that you have created and selected your calling card feature, how do you use it? Simple, just select a phone number to dial using the same procedures as you have always used. When you press TALK though, hold it for a second or two and the phone will say:

Card Call...

If you look carefully, you'll see that a 1 has been added to the beginning of the phone number. Once the connection is made, the phone's screen will show:

Wait for tone,
then press OK

It says this because the feature we are using is expecting the front-end of a long distance dialing service. You don't' have to worry about this, so just press OK to clear this from the display, and then carry on with your phone call as usual.

Repeat Letters

Applies to: 6190, 5190, 3390, 6188, 6185, 6160, 6120

When entering text messages or phone book names, it may not be obvious how one goes about entering two letters on the same key. Sure, you could wait a couple of seconds for the cursor to return, but this really slows you down. Some people found that pressing the # key twice in a row (thus toggling from upper to lowercase and back again) did the trick. However, you can achieve the same result with just a single key press. Simple press the arrow up or arrow down key, then continue entering your letters. The only gotcha with this approach is that you must press this key before the usual time-out occurs and cursor re-appears.

Note that in the case of the 3390, this assumes you are using standard text entry and not Predictive Text Entry.

Quick Profile Changes

Applies to: Most Nokia Phones

As you already know, you can change profiles by selecting them using the Profiles menu option. You may also know that you press the power button and then select the profile you want from the resulting menu. However, you may not have known that you can select a profile even quicker than that. Just press the power button once, then hit key 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 (or 7 for the 3390). This will select the various profiles immediately. Power-2 is "Normal" and so on up the list. Power-1 turns the phone off instantly (no waiting).

Lots of Dates and Times

Applies to: Most Nokia Phones

As you may already know, the Nokia 61xx stores the last 10 numbers you dialed, the last 10 numbers you received calls from, and the last 10 calls you missed. However, the manual makes no mention of another rather nifty feature: the phone stores the last 5 dates and times for EACH of those 30 call log entries! Try calling your phone a three times in a row and don't bother answering the calls (thus putting these calls in the "Missed Calls" log). Try to space these calls by at least a minute so they will show as being received at different times. Now checked the Missed Calls log. You will find your home phone number in there only ONCE, so how can you tell when your three calls came in? Just ask the phone to display the date and time of the call, then press the cursor down (or up) button to scroll through the times it has stored for that number.