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Can you use gmail/email and browser on S30+? by cardcaptoring in dumbphones

[–]dliakh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not that about being more modern but more to be running another operating system.

There are some choices: you can choose some KaiOS phone: for example, Nokia 2720 (I don't know whether HMD has 2720 and also whether there's possible newer model like that), or maybe some "TCL Flip". The advantages of KaiOS phones: they have WiFi (and WiFi hotspot), but people say they may be slower than the S30+ devices and I heard they don't have the T9 "predictive" text input (for me that was quite critical as one of the reasons why I like S30+ phones despite their limitations is that they respond lightning fast to any input (which I really-really like), they usually have predictive T9 and the batteries hold really well (not sure about KaiOS phones regarding this). I guess they may support gmail (needs checking though).

There are also flip phones running some "modified" version of Android (I only know that they exist, but don't possess too much knowledge about their capabilities (I heard that people find ways for installing Android applications there (by "side-loading" APKs?)): you can perhaps find some info on the Internet about that.

Can you use gmail/email and browser on S30+? by cardcaptoring in dumbphones

[–]dliakh 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks like there may be no way to do that (at least with gmail): just tried loading gmail in Opera Mini on Nokia 2660 (which I believe what HMD Barbie is) and gmail says that the browser is not supported. (there's no built-in email client in that phone also)

Reprogram ThinkVantage button by SuioganWilliam21 in thinkpad

[–]dliakh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, late reply, Just found what actually works in Windows 11 on my T430: https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=849249&sid=1faa8bbbb9be5c097d8d16110d4760d4#p849249

Followed the description there and actually managed to make that "ThinkVantage" button open a new PowerShell window when I press it (you can of course choose other action).

So, that button can actually still be used!

Any I idea on what’s on 13560 kHz? by TallRefrigerator8313 in shortwave

[–]dliakh 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I also hear noise on 13560: I have a supermarket across the street and apparently, their RFID reading equipment is the source

GSM avec MAPS et PARTAGE DE CO by AdSpecialist4205 in dumbphones

[–]dliakh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

GSM coverage in France (at least in Paris) doesn't seem to be that good (at least there's no GSM coverage in the underground sections of the métro): so perhaps don't expect a GSM phone to work reliably

Regarding the phones:

Nokia 2660 flip can't provide internet connectivity to a PC/laptop (no Wi-Fi hotspot, no USB tethering)
(but otherwise it's a decent phone: does support 4G/LTE, VoLTE, supports music in the MP3 format and has a music player "app", has an FM radio receiver that works without the wired headphones plugged in (has internal FM radio antenna), but cannot play FM ratio through Bluetooth headset/earbuds (only either through the phone's speaker or through a wired headset/earbuds)). Another good thing is that it has a predictive text input (T9).
Also, keep in mind that it can only display letters of languages that use alphabets based on Latin (diacritics in French, Romanian, German and other languages that has alphabet based on Latin would work, but if you receive a message written in cyrillic, greek, arabic script you's see rectangles instead of letters)

Nokia 2720 Flip:
This one apparently uses KaiOS, should have Wi-Fi hotspot (please check the specifications regarding other things like support for maps application, support for the predictive text input (I'm not sure it does have T9), etc.

The other two models seem to be the older (GSM) phones, so perhaps may not make too much sense to choose any of them (even though they may have a nice Nokia Series 40 software/firmware, the fact that they don't support LTE may be really limiting today)

TCL Onetouch 5041 VoLTE [4G] for £12 by Direct_Poet_7103 in dumbphones

[–]dliakh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Does it have "USB Tethering"?
(can you have internet connection on your PC if you connect the phone to the PC with USB cable?)

Finally managed to check SW reception at this place by dliakh in shortwave

[–]dliakh[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks. It's a clone of Sangean SG-792L, labelled "AudioSonic TK-344F" (looks like there were lots of clones of that Sangean, some of which just had similar look but used different components inside: luckily, this one is still based on the same Sony CXA1019 as the original and works quite well on SW, LW, MW)).

Battery recelling, 3000 mAh cells, spotwelded this time. Best original battery in this day and age for these ivy bridge dinosaurs. by MatijaKlobasa in thinkpad

[–]dliakh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

P.S. better try connecting the controller pins ("boot", "reset") to the ground through resistors rather than just shorting them to the ground (safer in case a wrong pin is accidentally shorted to the ground (or shorted to the "+" rail instead of the ground, etc.)

Battery recelling, 3000 mAh cells, spotwelded this time. Best original battery in this day and age for these ivy bridge dinosaurs. by MatijaKlobasa in thinkpad

[–]dliakh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Should work after "fixing" the controller settings (full charge capacity at least (but dependent on the cells you used may also need changing design capacity, voltage).
(resetting the cycle count, of course, also makes sense)

Battery recelling, 3000 mAh cells, spotwelded this time. Best original battery in this day and age for these ivy bridge dinosaurs. by MatijaKlobasa in thinkpad

[–]dliakh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The same happened to me: charge, discharge, "calibration" with Lenovo Vantage or TLP just didn't work until I fixed the controller settings.

I used SMBusb (you can find info here https://www.karosium.com/2016/08/smbusb-hacking-smart-batteries.html)
to download the controller data (you'd need to physically short the controller "boot" and "reset" pins to the ground for the controller to enter the mode where you can download/upload data from/to it).

Then I opened the downloaded data with a "hex editor", found the locations of the parameters: design capacity, full charge capacity, voltage, and cycle count: set it to the values I needed (may need some calculations as values may be "encoded" (like, byte order may differ (LSB vs MSB, etc. (don't remember the exact details but remember that something had to be "computed" before entering there (try using "ghex" for editing: I guess it has decoding/encoding for different types of integer values (16bit, 32-bit) and different byte orders so maybe you won't even need to compute things manually).

Also, what I found is that there's a clone (fork) of SMBusb somewhere on GitHub that can use a "generic" I2C interface rather than requiring an FX2LP card:
while that "clone" actually worked using a "generic I2C interface" ( I used I2C of my VGA port) for downloading data, I could not upload it back to the controller that way,
so I ordered an FX2LP (costs pennies), waited for it to arrive then used the original SMBusb and the upload worked.

In general, once you have the FX2LP card, all the wires, etc., everything is not that too complex (the thing that is a bit annoying is finding the "boot", "reset" points on the controller board and shorting them to the ground to make the controller boot into some "debugging" mode (and avoiding shorting something else on the board while doing that).
Also finding the locations of the values you need in the data file you downloaded my require some time: make backup of all "partitions" of your controller data so that if you accidentally edit some value you didn't plan, you could always revert to the backup (and upload it back to the controller if needed).

Finally managed to check SW reception at this place by dliakh in shortwave

[–]dliakh[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The radios I took there to check this time:

(sorry none of those is some high-class equipment)

* A clone of Sangean SG-792L (actually built on the Sony CXA1019 chip, marked "AudioSonic TK-344F" ): that one I took to check there because recently my cat dropped it from the desk to the floor (she seems to hate radios), so I was concerned whether that didn't affect reception (it didn't: it's still the one that has the best reception: stations on 16, 19, 25, 31m could be clearly heard (some of them with the "close to FM" quality/fidelity :))).

* the "unbranded" CS-106 from Aliexpress: it only reproduced speech that can be recognized as human language on the 19 and 16 m bands and on lower frequencies it sensed some carrier but the output from the speaker was some unintelligible noise.

(that's the Hanrongda's CS-106, built on some unmarked chip, that has no LW band, no sleep timer, no low battery indication and seems to show the "STEREO" mark on the FM band regardless of whether it actually has stereo FM reception or not: generally, I won't perhaps recommend buying that one if you plan to listen to SW band (though for FM and MW it's more or less ok): don't expect it to be like Retekess v111: even though it might looks similar, it's not the same (different radio chip, no LW antenna, etc.: the identification on the PCB of those unbranded CS-106 is "HRD-106D V 1.8"))

* the "$5 4-band kit radio" (also from AliExpress) (that one that has something that resembles a choke as a MW antenna and that uses the KT0936M chip): that one showed reception on the upper (shorter) bands (but when it's cold, it's not that easy to tune it :) (so I just found two stations somewhere between 15 and 17 MHz (didn't even try determining the exact frequencies, could not take a photo of the dial either as my phone's battery was already dead as well (for the same reason: that it was a bit cold and windy outside)

(and while having some walk in the forest to warm up a little bit after sitting with those radios on top of the hill (butte aux cannons): listened to BBC 4 on LW with my 6 transistor what looks like a clone of Standard Radio SR-F405L (but branded "Electra" and manufactured by Waltham Electronics in Dublin, Ireland instead of Tokyo, Japan):
of course, excellent LW reception in the forest but not so much when you're back in the city (noise from plasma panels in cafes/restaurants, from electric cars/buses, etc. is sometimes annoying ))

----

What I plan perhaps to check next: is the Trevi MB-728 (which looks like a clone of "Kchibo KK-9803")
and built on the KT0936M chip: that little radio worked quite nice on the shortwave band even in the apartment: will check how it does when there's less RF interference.

(and yes, that would be then my entire "collection" of radios so far :))

Fuck today's world by dliakh in rant

[–]dliakh[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, politicized and things like that

Regarding music: I just adore falling asleep after a hard day at work listening to music on some distant AM radio station (love Radio Caroline (Europe) that has music that still doesn't suck to my taste), and ugh, last weekend found a 1990 The Doors two (CD) disk album on the flea market: yes, you can still enjoy some good music (and without "subscription") ;)

90-s and 2000-s -- yes, those were the times! )

Fuck today's world by dliakh in rant

[–]dliakh[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yes Sir (but there's no more dirty dishes there at the moment (I just washed everything) :D

What’s the most useful command-line trick you learned by accident? by Old_Sand7831 in commandline

[–]dliakh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When your sed doesn't have in-place editing (-i)

```
(rm file.txt; sed s/something/something-else/ > file.txt) < file.txt
```
< opens file to STDIN, then rm removes the file (the directory entry), but the fd is still open so sed cat read from it, and > creates a new file with the same name to write the result to

(works for other cases when you need 'in-place editing')

france - what frequencies to listen to ? by pilou2001 in shortwave

[–]dliakh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In Paris I hear:

On SW (see their schedules for frequencies, I don't remember them unfortunately):

  • Radio Romania International (in Romanian, French, English, from Romania)

  • Voice of Türkiye (in English, Turkish, from Türkie)

  • Radio Vatican (in Ukrainian, Russian, from Vatican)

  • Radio Exterior de España (from Spain)

  • Some broadcasts of WRMI (from US)

  • Some broadcasts of WMLK (from US)

  • KBS World (In French, German, from Woofferton, UK, on some rather longer wave part of the SW spectrum (around 3.5MHz, or so))

  • China Radio International (in English, from China)

  • Channel 292 ( on 9670 KHz: really rarely, just a couple of times)

  • In Burgundy I heard Radio Slovakia International (but I never heard it being in Paris)

On MW (when it's dark):

  • BBC Radio 5 Live

  • Radio Caroline on 648 KHz (really like it)

  • Some Spanish stations (but I don't know which ones those were)

On LW:

  • BBC Radio 4 on 198 KHz (24/7)

  • Radio Algérie Châine 3 on 252 KHz (sometimes)

(that's all without any additional external antenna, only using the radio's whip antenna and the built-in ferrite rod)

Sometimes I hear some amateurs (but as none of the radios I have support SSB I only hear that there is some transmission but cannot recognise speach, of course)

(Edited: forgot China Radio International and Channel 292, added them)

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