InfoTart

A year ago or so, I got my mitts on a Motorola A1200 Ming phone (red!!) imported from China. These phones not only look wicked cool, but also feature a touch screen operating system running Linux. And like all of Motorola’s coolest phones, it’s not available in the U.S. Hello, Motorola! No wonder they’re having problems…

Anyway, I just had a brilliant thought. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Ming could run Google’s new smartphone OS called Android?

Android is a modern smartphone OS, also Linux based just like the Ming, and can also handle touch screen input. From what I understand, Android also isn’t too taxing on hardware. But perhaps most importantly, the Android platform — like the iPhone — has captured the imagination of gazillions of developers. When Android finally launches, this summer, there will be tons of fun, exciting, and innovative software that will run on it. More than the Ming currently has, that’s for sure! So I can’t help but thinking that Android would be a fantastic marriage with the Ming design!

I did some Google searching on this topic. Most unfortunately, though I found several developer posts also suggesting this idea, it doesn’t look like there’s been any progress yet. Then again, Google hasn’t finalized Android yet, so perhaps I should just be patient…

Meanwhile, Motorola is planning a new version of the Ming device called the A1600. I suspect it’s due out sometime this summer or fall. Some reports I said that they expected the A1600 out this spring, but Motorola device programs are always late.

I’m thrilled to hear that Motorola is releasing the A1600 (the “Ming 2″) because rumors have it that the device will feature a boatload of fabulous features: quad-band GSM and assisted GPS are the ones that I find the most intriguing. Actually, it would be ideal if the device also featured American 3G (AT&T flavor), as well!

Oh yeah, and if the A1600 could be hacked to run Android, too!!

The Mobile Mondays Boston chapter sponsored an Apple iPhone SDK launch party at the Apple Store in Cambridgeside Galleria tonight. I had fun!

There were probably at least 200 people crammed into the store for a keynote chat by , a prominent iPhone hacker from New Hampshire. Jonathan also just happened to write a book on programming for the iPhone called iPhone Open Application Development.

A handful of companies gave demos of products targeted for iPhones. Most were web-based, including a fantastic Urban Interactive social mobile adventuring demo. A gentleman from 1st Works demoed their Files2Phones product running on an iPhone as a web-based application.The F2P product works shockingly well!

Below are two pictures I captured with my Sony Ericsson w960i. Shhh! Fortunately, no one seemed to notice it wasn’t an iPhone! (Or, this being New England, they probably just politely ignored such an indiscretion…)

Jonathan Zdziarski Gives His Keynote at the Apple iPhone SDK Launch Party

Apple iPhone SDK Launch Party Crowd (March 24, 2008)

CrunchGear is running a contest to give away a piece of crap MP4 music player. Details here:

www.crunchgear.com/2008/03/20/contest-win-this-geekscom-2gb-hunk-of-garbage/

What?? Did someone say “win a free geeky device”? Oh yes, my friend, they did! And of course, I just had to enter the contest!

To enter, you had to write a post on CrunchGear.com/bff saying what you’d do with it. Well, my post isn’t exactly about what to do with it, but since the key phrase “pigboat explosion” had to be in the subject line, it got the little wheels in my brain a-turning. So I wrote a fun little posting. Here’s an excerpt:

“McJobs, 2GB, lived a somewhat infamous lifestyle as he claimed to be the love child of the Apple iPhone and a Mexican prostitute, conceived during a drunken spring break excursion. The iPhone disavows any relationship to Mr. McJobs, but did admit to a weakness for cheap tequila. ”

[Read the full post...]

Now, I guess I have to be careful if I were to win the device. According to the unfortunate, underpaid blog writer at TechCrunch who reviewed the device, use of the device “may cause herpes, loose stool, and renal failure.” Yikes! But I’m willing to take that chance for a piece of exotic gadgetry. After all, I do use a UIQ-based phone!

Meanwhile, have I mentioned my cool new scuba gear and underwater GPS unit? (Read the full post…)

Let’s say that you’re tethered to Sprint — a CDMA network. Which means that you can’t buy any of the cool unlocked European smartphones from Nokia or Sony-Ericsson (which all run on GSM).

Despite such a tough situation, all hope is not lost if you’d like all of the benefits of buying a smartphone. True, you won’t be able to use an Apple iPhone, but there are other very good devices out there that will help you stay connected to your emai and calendar, plus let you do fun stuff like browse the web, play music and videos, open & edit Microsoft Office documents, and install great third party games and software. Such are the benefits of paying a few bucks more for a “smartphone” rather than one of the cheap-o — and limited — mass market phones.

So a buddy of mine called me today to ask for recommendations on a smartphone and he’s tied to Sprint for another year or two. He currently owns an old Palm Treo device which is definitely past its prime. Here is what I wrote to him in an email.

—————–

Okay, here’s the good news. If you decide to go with any of the devices listed here, I’m sure you’d be happy. So don’t sweat over the decision too much. What you should do is find a device whose style you like, and which you find “easy to use”, however you define that for yourself. Definitely check out some reviews online, as well, before visiting the store.

PALM OS
If you go with a PalmOS device, then I might recommend the new Centro. I was chatting with a guy at the bar the other day who had one and he loves it. It’s stylish, compact, and lightweight. It runs PalmOS, so if you have invested in any software, those products will be able to work on this device, as well. It’s also pretty inexpensive.

WINDOWS MOBILE

• Moto Q 9c: It’s stylish and runs Windows Mobile 6. By connecting your Exchange account to the device, you’ll keep your contacts, calendar, and email seamlessly sync’ed on the device, just like a BlackBerry. The web browser is reasonably ok. It has GPS (yay!). You can also add an SD card to add more memory (think your favorite music & video on the phone!). This is my current favorite Windows Mobile device (though I don’t own one) and I find it to be suitably responsive. (Don’t confuse it with the original Motorola Q, which is uglier, older, and not as cool.) Not a touch screen.
• Samsung ACE: I’ve never used this one, but I suspect that it is essentially the same thing as the BlackJack, which was very popular and which I thought was okay. Though I did find the keys to kind of hurt after awhile of using. It also runs Windows Mobile 6 and is expandable with a memory card. And like all of Windows Mobile-powered devices, ought to sync with Exchange over the air. Not a touch screen.
• HTC Mogul: A buddy of mine has an older version of this device an loves it. I find them annoying, but that may be just me. The cool thing is it runs WM6 Professional (aka PocketPC), so it’s a touch screen, and it has a slide out qwerty keyboard. Oh, and it supports memory cards and has built-in WiFi, which I find to be useful for updating email or browsing the web at home or the office.
• HTC Touch: It’s a little gimmicky, but HTC put a nice “skin” over WM6 Pro to make it work better with fingers and which is prettier and much cooler than regular Windows Mobile. It was released before the iPhone and has quite a following, especially in Europe. It has all of the benefits of being a WM6 device (like integration with Exchange; multi-media) and it supports memory cards, but I don’t think it supports WiFi. Still, it’s a slim, sexy phone and a lot of fun. There’s no qwerty (or even regular) keypad, so entering long email or text messages would be a pain, but for shorter messages, I’m sure it would be fine. You can find lots of reviews on the web for more information.

I don’t think I could recommend the Treo 700wx because it runs the older Windows Mobile 5 PocketPC, which feels very dated. I’ve used that device before and wasn’t blown away by it at all. Plus, Windows Mobile 6 fixed many of the worst problems that afflicted WM5.

- Anthony

Steve Litchfield, over at All About Symbian, wrote a great article yesterday on how to put Gmail on your Nokia Symbian-based S60 phone. In addition, he noted that you can set the phone to automatically check for new messages every few minutes (the duration is configurable). By setting it to, say, every 5 minutes, you effectively get “push” email just like a BlackBerry! That’s pretty nice, especially for “prosumers” who rely on email but may be often away from the office, such as real estate agents or people who work in small offices without formal IT departments.

(And besides, the BlackBerry user interface is boring boring boring. And it’s too hard to set the damn things up for PIM sync. And who wants to pay extra for the “BlackBerry Bolt-On” like some carriers charge, along with any extra fees that your email provider may tack on!)

The cool thing is that this same capability is built into UIQ phones! So I updated my blog posting from January with the step-by-step instructions for folks like me who are enjoying UIQ devices.

My Blog Post: Putting Gmail on Your UIQ3 Phone 

I gave a presentation on user interface design and marketing on mobile phones this afternoon for a boutique ad agency in Cambridge. It was a lot of fun and we had some great discussions.

One of the questions that came up was how to take screenshots for mobile phones. That’s an excellent question and one that has bedeviled me in the past, as well. So here are links to the software programs I use for taking screenshots on these types of phones.

• S60: I highly recommend the free utility called Screenshot from Antony Pranata. It’s a very good free product.
• UIQ: There are now two products I can recommend.

1. CellPhoneSoft AutoCam: This is a good product at a good price, just $15. Note that the license key is locked to your phone’s unique IMEI number.
2. Screenshot from Antony Pranata: He has ported it to the UIQ platform. I haven’t tried it for UIQ yet, but considering that the S60 version is great, I expect this turned out well, too. Price: Free.

• BlackBerry: There’s an excellent utility called BBScreenShooter and its’s free. However, it’s pretty complicated to set up. Also, it only works when the device is connected to your computer with a cable. Still, it’s free and it works well.
• Windows Mobile: Illium Software offers two free applications, one each for Windows Mobile Smartphone/Standard and PocketPC/Professional. The product can be a little tricky to use sometimes. There are also commercial (non-free alternatives), but I’ve relied on Illium’s free utilities in the past.
• PalmOS: LinkSOFT GMBH offers a screen capture utility for Palm devices, but I haven’t tried it yet. The price is a reasonable $15.
• Nokia 770 running Maemo OS2006: There’s a free utility called CPU/Mem/Screenshot which can take screenshots of the 770. I’ve used it before and it works fine. I’m not sure if any utilities are yet available for the newer generations of the Nokia Internet Tablet, the N800 and N810, but a simple search of the Maemo application catalog will hopefully turn up something.
• Apple iPhone: There’s nothing official yet, but if you’ve jailbroken your phone, you could give the iPhone ScreenShot utility from Rabota a try. Note the version compatibility warnings! Hopefully, once Apple officially opens the device to third party software, we’ll see more official — and stable — products.
• Google Android: Since the OS is still under development and there aren’t any devices released yet, your best bet at this time is to take screenshots of apps running in the emulator. I’ll update this item when I run across a screenshot utility.
• S80: For owners of these older devices, you can use an excellent utility called Remote S80 by Mobileways.de. You might need to get the software from a third party such as Handango or Motricity as I don’t think they support it any more.
• Motorola RAZR: Here’s a link to an excellent post at ModMyMoto on how to take a screenshot on a RAZR. It’s not for the feint of heart.
• All Other Phones: Sorry, no information! Worse yet, it’s probably not possible due to basic software restrictions common in most other phones. A good alternative for Java (J2ME) software is to install an emulator on your PC and take regular screenshots of the product running in the emulator.

I am the proud owner of a Sony Ericsson W960i. It’s a Walkman branded smartphone with a touch screen. I am really loving this phone!

The device runs an OS called UIQ. Last night, I went to the UIQ web site and downloaded some free themes. UIQ currently offers 7 excellent free themes. The one I activated immediately is called Barcelona, which is my favorite of the 7. Boy, it’s pretty…

If you own a UIQ-powered device, definitely check out the set of free themes from UIQ!

At my day job, we buy a lot of new phones to help with software testing. Usually, we’ll buy a phone directly from one of the U.S. carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon). But sometimes we need to order an unlocked phone over the internet because the phone isn’t sold by any of the U.S. carriers. (What is an unlocked phone?) A good example why we would need to is pretty much any smartphone that’s popular in Europe, such as the Nokia E65 or N95 (S60 based); or Sony-Ericsson W960i, P1i, or Motorola MOTORIZR Z8 (which are UIQ3 based). Maybe someday American carriers will start selling cool European smartphones here, as well…

Anyway, when you purchase an unlocked phone, it means that it hasn’t been specially set up to run on any particular carrier’s network. So there are a number of things you need to do with it before you can really use it — whether personally or for testing like we do.

So if Santa was *really* good to you, here’s a helpful checklist of things you should do to prepare your new unlocked cell phone.

Core Adjustments

• Firmware Update: Before doing anything else, check to see if a newer version of the firmware is available. Phones are often released to the market before they’re quite ready, to be honest. If you bought the phone at a store or kiosk, see if they’ll do it for you (free or for a modest fee). Some manufacturers offer free software for your computer so you can update the firmware from the comfort of your home or office. (Nokia and Sony-Ericsson make it particularly easy to update the firmware!)
• Language: Often, turning the phone on for the first time shows you a language selection option. So choose wisely here! You can change it later if you need to in the device settings.
• Update the time and date. This will be in the phone’s Settings. Make sure you put your time and date display formats into your preferred style (e.g., 24 hour military time or 12 hour time; MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY).

• Little known fact: Most downloaded software requires the accurate date and time to install or work properly.
• Update the time zone. Also in the phone’s settings. Tip: Updating the time zone often also updates your number formats, like currency mark, decimal and thousands separators, etc. After updating the time zone, check these, just in case they need adjustment too.
• Adjust the Backlight: I like to make the backlight as bright as possible, and to make the backlight timeout as long as possible. Note that your battery drain rate will take a huge hit by adjusting these settings!
• Flight Mode: For UIQ devices, I go into the Flight Mode setting and turn off the “prompt me at startup for flight mode”. How annoying…
• Idle Screen Shortcuts: For some phones, like S60 and UIQ, you can customize which programs have short cuts on the Idle Screen (a.k.a., “the screen that you first see when turning on the phone”). I like to make sure that the Contacts and Web are easy to get to. Other favorite shortcuts are the Messaging application, alarm clock, Music and Video players, and notepad.

Internet Access

If your mobile subscription has a data plan, then you’ll want to make sure that the data settings are set up properly. Skip this section if you don’t have a data plan.

• Internet Access Points (APN): When you buy a phone direct from a carrier, it will already be programmed with APNs for that carrier. But if you buy it unlocked, you’ll need to set those up yourself. The ease of doing this varies greatly by the type of phone you have. Note that if you need to manually enter settings, they can be case-sensitive. And triple check your spelling!

• Nokia S60 and S40 phones: Go to the Nokia.com web site, choose your region, then choose Get Support and Software, then Setup, then Get Settings. Choose the Standard Settings option to start. (Shortcut for users in the U.S.)
• Sony-Ericsson Java Phones and UIQ Phones: Go to the Sony-Ericsson web site, choose your region, then Support, then Mobile Internet (WAP). (Shortcut for users in the U.S.)
• Motorola Phones: You have to enter the settings manually. After registering at Motorola’s web site, you are supposed to be able to get more information (but I’m not sure where on the site exactly…).
• Tip: If you own one of Motorola’s UIQ3 devices, like the MOTORIZER Z8 or Z10, then you’re lucky! Go to the Sony-Ericsson web site and pretend that your device is a P1i. Enter all of the other information, like your telephone number, accurately. Your phone will know how to use the special settings it receives.
• Palm Treo: You have to enter the settings manually. Here’s a good guide for Palm Treo owners.
• BlackBerry Phones: Things are complicated for you. The easiest thing (though annoying) is to call your carrier, tell them that you just bought a new unlocked phone, and ask them to send you the “service books” for Internet service. RIM has some info on their web site.
• Any Other Phone: You need to enter it manually. Ross Barkman has a good guide to data settings on phones. If you live in the United Kingdom, there’s also a good UK-specific guide for data settings.

• Web Test: After setting up the APN on your new phone, you’ll want to test it and make sure it works. I like to go to a well known web site. Probably the best idea is to go to Google.com because they know how to detect your device and show you a version of the web page that has been properly formatted for your device. If the web page doesn’t display correctly, double check the settings.

Contacts

Now, we need to add our contacts. This is a tedious process at best, impossible at worst. Literally! Your new phone should have come with PC connect software on a CD in the packaging. Hopefully, your old phone had come with PC connect software and you were already syncing your contacts to your PC from time to time. If so, do one more sync before setting the old phone aside. If not, then what options do you have if the manufacturer doesn’t offer sync software?

• Transfer at the Phone Kiosk: Stop by a store or kiosk for your carrier and see if they’ll be able to transfer your contacts over for you. If you’re lucky, they’ll say yes. If you’re even luckier, they’ll do it for free.
• SyncML: Check to see if your phone supports SyncML, a technology that can sync several kinds of data (including calendar and SMS) to phones. If you own one of the mass market Java phones, it probably doesn’t. You might be able to download software onto your old phone and transfer all of your contacts to your desktop or a web service. Then you can transfer them to your new phone if it supports SyncML.
• Zyb.com: I use a fantastic free web-based service called Zyb.com to sync all of my contacts between different phones. They support a large number of phones and have some other cool services.

Install PC Connect Software

Most of the better phones (especially smartphones) ship with free software that allows you to connect your PC and phone so you can copy over music and videos, install software, update firmware, sync contacts and calendar, etc.

Nokia and Sony-Ericsson’s PC Suite software are fantastic and have a ton of features. Microsoft’s ActiveSync for Windows Mobile devices is less capable, but at least offers a file manager and PIM sync capabilities. Availability for other phones varies wildly.

• Tip: Always always always install the PC Connect software first before connecting your phone to your PC for the first time! Doing so guarantees that the right drivers are on the PC to connect successfully. If you don’t install the software first, then you risk not ever being able to connect the phone to the PC successfully ever.

Install Your Favorite Mobile Software

I like to install a few favorite applications on a new phone. Perhaps you have some old favorites, too, such as games, productivity software, RSS feed readers, or what not. There are a ton of cool applications out there now for nearly any phone. Here are three of my favorites.

• Google Maps: I live in New England — the land of the drunken cow path turned paved road. Google released a version recently which can pinpoint your location to the nearest cell tower with no GPS necessary. (Supported for most phones.) If you have a smartphone (like Nokia S60 devices), then you can connect your phone via Bluetooth to a GPS receiver to see where you really are.
• Gmail: I like keeping in touch with my Gmail on the go. Their basic Java software is pretty good.
• iSkoot for Skype: It may be my day job, but I like keeping in touch with my Skype buddies on the go, as well. Plus the “click to call” feature is pretty cool!

The Fun Factor

Now that all of the important stuff is out of the way, it’s time for a bit of fun. Well, if we’re really going to use the phone purely for testing software, I don’t bother with this part. But if I intend to borrow the phone on weekends, then I like to add a bit of fun to it.

• First, I like to add some music, videos, and favorite pictures. Almost every phone ships with a music player and photo gallery nowadays. Plus most can play videos.
• Music Tip: Change the settings on your iTunes or Windows Media Player to rip CDs using MP3, at reasonably good quality (128 kb), and with no DRM protection. Any phone with a music player will at least know how to play MP3s! If you have a smartphone, then you might set iTunes or Windows Media Player to rip into the MPEG4 (.mp4) format instead.
• Picture Tip: You know how so many digital cameras nowadays snap pics at like 5 megapixels? Yeah — too big for a phone! (And too big for emailing to your family and friends, too!!) So make copies of your favorite pictures, then resize them to a more reasonable size. Set them to a DPI (dots per inch) Resolution of 96, and make sure that the longer of the width or height is no more than about 500 pixels (or 800 pixels for iPhone/iPod Touch users).
• Video Tip: Video is tough because phone support varies so much. If you have a smartphone, then you’re probably fine, but most Java phones don’t play video so well. I purchased DVD Catalyst to convert my DVDs to file sizes and formats that work well on mobile phones. What’s cool is that the program has a lot of presets for particular devices. One of these days I’ll publish more info on that process…
• Ringtone: Why pay for a ringtone when it’s so easy to copy a song from your music collection to the phone and set that as the ringtone? Well, I take that back. Many Java phones (like the LG Chocolate and Venus) don’t allow you to set your own tunes as the ringtone. Not cool! This is another reason why I have a bias for smartphones. Nokias and Sony-Ericssons let you easily set any of your songs as the ringtone. That’s cool!
• Themes: I also like to add a theme or two, if any catch my eye. However, I don’t like paying for themes unless they’re really good. There are a lot of creative people who make decent themes casually and share them for free, so definitely look around.

• UIQ3 Devices: The UIQ company has commissioned a bunch of really cool themes, which they offer for free on their web site.
• Nokia S60 Devices: There’s no one really good place to go for S60 themes. Some web sites charge for themes which you can get for free elsewhere. Plus they often inundate you with too much advertising or other nonsense.

• Free Nokia themes for E61/E62
• Symbian Themes: This site seems to offer a good selection of free themes without too much annoyance.
• Wallpaper: And don’t forget to set the wallpaper on the Idle Screen with a picture of your adorable kids/pet/spouse/etc.!

I had tried Google’s online RSS news feed reader a couple of years ago, and wasn’t too impressed with it. So in the meantime, I’ve been using the free Sharp Reader client on my work computer. It’s a nice client, though it may be a bit of a memory hog and I think it could use some serious usability enhancements. But hey, it’s free and it does a decent job, so I shouldn’t complain (too much).
Well, I find myself wanting to check up on my news feeds while at home, also — but I usually leave my work laptop at work. So what to do? Put Sharp Reader on my home laptop as well and try to keep the feed lists synchronized between the two computers? Ugh — that would be a nightmare.

So a few days ago I decided to give Google Reader another look. And I’m glad I did! Here is a brief list of what I like about the new Google Reader:

• The user interface has been greatly improved.
• You can type in a web URL and it will automatically and very intelligently figure out the feed address.
• It has dynamic folders so that one feed can be listed in multiple folders.
• It’s really smart about suggesting other news feeds that you might like.
• It’s easy to manage news feeds.
• It has cool buttons for navigating up and down a list to the next and previous posts, which helps for speed reading a feed.
• And probably the coolest feature is that you can share favorite news posts with your friends who also use Google Reader.

No big complaints yet either, which is cool.

If I could wish for one feature, what would it be?

I wish that I could install a native Google Reader client for my Nokia E65 and Sony-Ericsson W960i (that is, programmed specifically for S60 and UIQ rather than in crappy mobile Java). After logging into the client, it could automatically update its list and let me read posts offline — like when I’m commuting to work in the Boston subway (or in the bathroom!). No phone reception there!

We just got the sexy new Sony-Ericsson W960i at the office. In case you haven’t seen it before, it’s the new Walkman branded smartphone with a whopping 8 GB of memory! So of course I’m “borrowing” it for awhile…

Last night I loaded up the phone with a bunch of music from my iTunes, a few pictures, and a bunch of fun videos from my DVD collection (Invader Zim, Rick & Steve, South Park, Happy Tree Friends, etc.). (Yes, I know that’s a bunch of cartoons, but 22 min. cartoons are great viewing on the go!)

By the way… Not only does the W960 play music exceptionally well, but it plays videos really well, too! I think I’m going to enjoy this…

Anyway, so as long as I’m “borrowing” the phone for a few weeks — and since I have an unlimited data plan with AT&T — I figured I might as well put my email on the phone. I have 3 accounts, so it can be hard keeping track of them! It turns out that the UIQ-based smartphones (such as the P1i and the W960) have a pretty good built-in email client. (And goodness knows that even an old rock would be better than Pocket Outlook which ships on Windows Mobile devices…)

The bad news is that Google doesn’t offer any UIQ-specific advice on how to set up Gmail on UIQ phones. The good news is that after lots of trial and error and explorations of Gmail Help documenation, I figured out how to set it up! Although it’s true that you can download and install the Java version directly from Google (I tried that also), I’m just not fond of that Java client on UIQ.

1. Go to the main UIQ menu. Click on Messaging.
2. In the bottom Command Bar, click on More > Settings > Email accounts.
3. On the Email Accounts screen, Click on More > New account.
4. In the new email account setup screen, there are 3 tabs. Let’s review each one individually.

Basic Tab

• Account Name: Gmail (or whatever you want to call your account)
• Your Name: Clark Gable
• Email address: clark.gable@gmail.com (Yes, put your full email address here.)
• Connection Type: IMAP

Inbox Tab

• Incoming Server Address: imap.gmail.com
• Username: clark.gable (Don’t add the @gmail.com here)
• Password: ******
• On the rest of the tab, optionally choose your download restrictions (I set mine to download anything smaller than 200 kb) and choose how many emails to store on the device. (I don’t get too many via Gmail and its spam filter is very good, so I’m just storing the last 30.)
• Receive using group: You can also choose which data access point to use. I have chosen the default group, which I’ve separately set up to try my home WiFi, my work WiFi, and otherwise the AT&T data network.

Outbox Tab

• Outgoing server address: smtp.gmail.com
• Use SMTP Authentication: Check this
• Use Inbox Login Details: Check this, too
• Send using group: Again, make sure your preferred access point is selected.

5. You’re almost done! But first, we have to set some advanced settings. So in the Command Bar, click on More > Advanced. The advanced settings dialog has two more tabs:

Advanced - Incoming Tab

• Secure Connection: Choose SSL
• Incoming Mail Port: 993

Advanced - Outgoing Tab

• Secure Connection: Choose TLS
• Outgoing Mail Port: 587
• Use MIME Encoding: Check this

That ought to do it, so enjoy! These settings ought to work for any UIQ3 phone, such as the P1i, M600i, W960i, P990i, and probably the Motorola MOTORIZR Z8, too!

Update (March 14, 2008)

Steve Litchfield, over at All About Symbian, wrote a great article yesterday on how to put Gmail on your Nokia Symbian-based S60 phone. In addition, he noted that you can set the phone to automatically check for new messages every few minutes (the duration is configurable). By setting it to, say, every 5 minutes, you effectively get “push” email just like a BlackBerry! That’s pretty nice, especially for “prosumers” who rely on email but may be often away from the office, such as real estate agents or people who work in small offices without formal IT departments.

All About Symbian: How to Get Push Gmail for Free 

The same feature can be enabled on UIQ3 phones!

1. Launch the Messaging application.
2. Click More > Settings > Email Accounts.
3. Select your Gmail account from among those listed.
4. Next, you’ll see the Gmail account settings dialog with 3 tabs at the top: Basic, Inbox, Outbox. Good! You’re at the right place.
5. Click More > Sched. downl.
6. Check the box, “Schedule download,” to enable all of the settings!

Choose the amount of time between downloads, such as every 5 min. as Steve Litchfield described. You can also set the time of day during which the phone should automatically check for new emails. (This way, it’s not checking for new emails in the middle of the night!) By default, it was 9 am to 5 pm for me. But I would probably reset it to 8 am until 10 pm given my lifestyle!