Archive for Tutorial

How to disable 3G on your Samsung Omnia W

// December 30th, 2011 // 6 Comments » // Gadgets and Appliances Reviews, Saurabh's Tips and Tricks, Technology, Tutorial

This is another tip which I dug around for hours to get.
Posting it here so that it saves some people time.

So in my Samsung Omnia W Windows phone, it defaults to 3G out of the box and there is no visible setting to change it.
If you like me, don’t really want to switch to 3G and would rather prolong the life of your battery, here is what you need to do:

  1. Go into the phone dial mode.
  2. Type: ##3282#
  3. If the screen does not change to “field test”, tap the dial button.
  4. On the next screen which opens up, pop up the settings options from the bottom of the screen via the … button.
  5. Tap settings
  6. In the Network type, select 2G only
  7. Hit the back arrow and go to your home screen.
  8. Your phone will now work on the 2G network and consume lesser battery.

Hope this helps someone.

Importing Contacts to a Windows 7 Phone from your Nokia phone

// December 30th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Gadgets and Appliances Reviews, Saurabh's Tips and Tricks, Technology, Tutorial

I recently bought a Windows 7.5 phone which is pretty cool – but this being a Samsung Omnia W and my previous phone being a Nokia E72, I had a tough time importing contacts from one phone to another.

If both phones were Nokia (like the Lumia), Nokia has a very easy app which does this over bluetooth (I think) – but no luck here.

So this is what I ended up doing finally, which worked.
Putting it up so that it could save you some time mucking around with stuff.

You will need:

  1. Your old phone Nokia (Series 60)
  2. A Gmail account
  3. Internet access on your new Windows 7 phone
  4. A Windows computer

Step 1: Export all your Nokia contacts to .vcf files.
Your mileage may vary – but what I did was as follows.

  1. Go to your Contacts screen.
  2. Click on Options > Mark All
  3. Click on Options > Create Backup > Phone to memory card

Wait for a few seconds depending on how many contacts you have.
This will copy all your contacts to your memory card on your Nokia device.

For me, the contacts ended up being in:
Memory Card > Others > Contacts

Plug in your SD card to your computer (or plug in your phone) and copy this contacts folder to a location on your computer. (say C:\Contacts)

Then, concatenate all the .vcf files into one file using the following method:

  1. On your windows machine, click on Start > Run > cmd
  2. Browse to the Contacts folder
  3. Type: copy *.vcf all.vcf

This will put all your vcf files into one.

Step 2: Import your contacts to GMail

  1. Login to your GMail account (or create a new one if you don’t want to mess up your existing one)
  2. Go to the Contacts screen by clicking on the big MAIL text on the left hand side of the screen and selecting Contacts.
  3. On the screen that opens up, click on the More button > Import
  4. Select the all.vcf file and import.
    All your files should now be imported into GMail.
  5. Once this is done, click on the More button > Find & Merge Duplicates
    to let GMail quickly merge any duplicate accounts that you may have.

Step 3: Add this GMail account to your People App to sync all your contacts on your phone

  1. On your phone, click on the People tile.
  2. Pull up the settings from the bottom.
  3. Click on “add an account”
  4. Select Google
  5. Type in your credential
  6. Tap on “Sign in”
  7. Magically watch your contacts migrating into the Windows phone

Make sure that from the Settings section in the People tile (step 3.2 above), you have the Google account selected when you click on  the “Filter my contact list” button.

Thats all there is to it! Hope this is helpful to you!