N96 - Recommended Settings?

Well one of the first things i always do is setup and edit the profiles. Normal has my main ringtone. The a vibrate only profile, and then i make a stealth profile with no alert at all.

Of course i install all my good apps like smartlight, which i couldnt live without. Handy taskman, google maps, opera mini, slick, beeper, total recall, emtube, etc. And of course i setup those to home screen shortcuts.

Also setup all my browser bookmarks, and specifically rss feeds, like the ones for this site. Great news reading. And then i subscribe to all my podcasts and video casts in the podcasting app. Again i subscribe to this site cause if the great weekly video podcasts they put out, and audio ones too.

It really depends what you are looking for, but you probably want to:
- set or customize all the various tones (alarms, keypads, etc)
- turn video recording to high quality (TV High Quality)
- set up networking to add your home and/or work WLAN access point, define the default network access (you can define a priority order)
- make sure you set time and date correctly (important for N-Gage and DRM to work properly

Thank you, RogerPodacter and ninetysix!

I made compilation based on some of the recommendations and my own findings with S60 3.2.... Comments welcome. And now I have to try some of the applications mentioned by RogerPodacter that I did not know yet.... 😉

Keypad tones off
Via Tools --> Settings --> General --> Personalization --> Tones --> Keypad tones
I don't know about you, but those keypad tones drive me crazy. So I turn them off completely.

Display brightness to 75%
Via Tools --> Settings --> General --> Personalization --> Display --> Brightness
I find that the default setting of 50% is OK, but for outdoor use I prefer 75% (slider position one step right of the middle, not at the far right). Going to 100% does not give much extra benefit, and the display lights have the biggest impact to battery life.

Video recording quality set to best quality
Start the camera with a long and full press of the camera key.
After 1-2 seconds you see the camera viewfinder.
Go to video mode via the first little icon, or via Options --> Video Mode.
Now open Options --> Settings to get the video settings.
I set my video recording quality to "TV High Quality". That turns out to be VGA resolution (good for watching on the PC or TV) at 30 frames per second. By default my phone was only set to 15 frames per second.

Automatic time update
Via Tools --> Settings --> General --> Personalization --> Date and time --> Automatic time update
This gets the correct time and date set automatically from the network.

Security - set a lock code
Via Tools --> Settings --> General --> Security --> Phone and SIM card
If you ever lose your phone, you will feel better to know that at least your personal information cannot get stolen. So its a good idea to set a PIN code.

Display lights timeout
Via Tools --> Settings --> General --> Personalization --> Display --> Light timeout
I tend to set it a bit longer, to 20 seconds. It's just a trade-off between battery life and convenience.

System warning tones off
Via Tools --> Settings --> General --> Personalization --> Tones --> Warning tones
Maybe I will regret some time missing a warning, but I prefer not to hear these loud beeps.

Browser content settings
Via Browser --> Options
In the General settings area, I kept the access point to "Internet" but I noticed that this does not prompt me every time I connect to the network. It automatically prefers my home WLAN or any other known WLAN access point, but it does not automatically try to find a new WLAN access point. If you prefer to have more control, you can set this to "Always Ask".
I also turned off the Security warnings. Do I need to get a pop-up every time I am moving from a secure web page to an open one? No.
In the Page settings area, I kept "Load Content" set to all (but this also loads Flash content and Flash videos - so set this to "Images (no Flash)" if you have a skimpy data plan) and I changed "Automatic reload" to Off (I prefer the browser to be faster and re-use history).

Geotagging
Start the camera with a long and full press of the camera key.
After 1-2 seconds you see the camera viewfinder.
Under Options --> Settings you can turn on "Record location". If turned on, this uses the GPS to get the location where you are taking a picture, and inserts that location into the standard EXIF header of the image.

SMS reports turned on
Via Messaging --> Options --> Settings --> Text message --> Receive report
If you turn this on, you will see a report whenever a text message was received by the recipient. You can also see the status in the reports folder under the Messaging application, once they come in. I think the way it works is that an SMS receipt gets sent back to you from the recipient. I have never seen an extra charge for this from the operator - it seems to be part of the service.

Remote phone locking
Via Tools --> Settings --> General --> Security --> Phone and SIM card
A really cool feature of the N96 is the phone remote lock. Let's say you have just left your phone somewhere by accident and you want to immediately lock it remotely, so nobody else can use it. You can enable this (before you lose the phone, LOL) by setting Remote phone locking to "Enabled". You will be prompted to define a keyword. In the event that you want to lock your phone remotely, you just have to send an SMS to the phone that contains just this keyword.

Hi I am using Opera Mini and every time I want to go to a different web page it comes up with a security warning asking if its ok for Opera to access it. Is there a way of turning his off please?

cheers

jswarb001 wrote:Hi I am using Opera Mini and every time I want to go to a different web page it comes up with a security warning asking if its ok for Opera to access it. Is there a way of turning his off please?

cheers

application manager > installed apps > opera mini > options > settings

change "network access" to "ask first time"

and "connectivity" to "always allowed".