The big update

Hello everyone in W42S/W52S land. Where have I been? Well, I moved house.
The actual process of moving is rather simple and straight forward. Getting utilities is a snap. Getting a van and a driver to move it all in one go: no problem.

Getting internet set up at my new home: rediculously hard.

It took, count it... THREE months to get service. Now, granted, part of this delay was me being lazy on the paperwork, part of it was that string of vacation days last month, and part of it was just the ungodly amount of red tape that exists in Japan for the most trivial of matters. Seriously, getting my VISA was so much easier than this.

I would not normally make a financial recomendation, but in this case, I'm going to plug a service: http://bbapply.com/

If you are planning a move, or a change in internet provider, or want a house phone (land line or I.P. phone) or even if you want more TV channels than the 4 you get with that coat hanger sticking out the back of your set, you need to talk to this guy. He will save you a load of hassle.


Ok, so, back to the phone:

W52S Software Update
There was a software update issued over the last few months for the 52S. I am unsure about the 42S but both are easy to check for. Here is the procedure:

Menu: Functions/Settings - User Support - Soft Update - Update

The phone will then ask to confirm, hit ok, and it will connect to AU and download the update package. It will then ask to install. Select ok, and it will do its thing. It takes about 3 minutes, and will reboot itself.

You may notice that you have autoupdate on, and be asking "Why didnt it do this automatically?" Auto update will update SMALL parts of the software package that wont need rebooting. It does this regularly (checks in once a day). This update is a bit bigger.

I have yet to find any 'features' of the update, and wonder if it is worth it, or if it actually 'breaks' some of the work arounds I use. So far, I have not found any particular reason why you SHOULD do the update, nor have I found any reason NOT TO do the update. Your choice here...


W42S/W52S no longer on Sony Ericsson's website
It would appear that SE will no longer be supporting the phones, as they are stripped from the web site. Also, the link on the sidebar taking you to the USB driver for the 52S is now an invalid location. (Thank you to a user for pointing this out.)

I will attempt to find a permanant web location for the file. In the meantime, bear with me a bit.


Current state of hacking:
Zero
I have not really had the time (what with finding an engineering job, moving, and the stress of thinking I'd have to pack up and move back to the states BEFORE I got said new job) to do much hacking on the phone.

About all I can tell you is that my current experiences with Image Converter 2 leave me questioning my sanity. It finds the photo folder just fine, and will load any images I want quite fine. Video hower is still a nightmare. It will dump them into a folder of its own choosing, and the phone simple does not recognize the folder.
In the past, I was able to convert video, dump it to my root C drive, then copy those videos to the AUINOUT folder. From there, I would find the 'PC Folder' on the phone, and move the files in memory by selecting 'file corresponding'
I say "in the past" because currently, thats not working out so well for me either. I don't get it: I had entire MOVIES (2 plus hours long) on the phone, now I can't even get a simple music video.

Sigh.. I WILL sort this all out. Or I'll break down and buy Image Converter 3 (which, 'supposedly' works perfectly with the phone. Though I have yet to meet a person who has IC3)