fring hacks working 100% so far

[Guest Quist09]

Starting with my Nokia E61 I've been a fring user since their early days and quickly came to rely on it to receive and make international VOIP calls on my cell over 3G. I live in Europe and my parents live in the U.S. so I basically use fring as my international line with U.S. call-in numbers on Skype and a SIP provider along with call-out credit.

Of course, until now I had trouble getting it to work so reliably (but had the best luck with S60 phones, although on the TyTN it was intermittently OK, but the battery life was cut in half). Now with the Omnia, I initially had the phone freezing up on me. That is solved by installing fring on the Device storage and not on the My Storage internal card (for some reason the interface to the card always had a delay and caused a glitch). Then I had trouble keeping fring connected to the fring server because for some reason the 3G connection would appear to time out.

I have since applied a modified hack of that presented here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=273990

I changed the keys here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\State\Suspend\{98C5250D-C29A-4985-AE5F-AFE5367E5006} -change (Default) DWORD Dec to 1 (from 0)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\State\Resuming\{EB91C7C9-8BF6-4a2d-9AB8-69724EED97D1} -change (Default) DWORD Dec to 1 (from 4)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\State\Unattended\{EB91C7C9-8BF6-4a2d-9AB8-69724EED97D1} -change (Default) DWORD Dec to 1 (from 4)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\State\ScreenOff\{EB91C7C9-8BF6-4a2d-9AB8-69724EED97D1} -change (Default) DWORD Dec to 1 (from 4)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\State\UserIdle\{EB91C7C9-8BF6-4a2d-9AB8-69724EED97D1} -change (Default) DWORD Dec to 1 (from 4)

For some reason (probably taking the Standby key from 0 to 1) the batterylife estimate indicates an extension of batterylife (from what it was previously with ActiveSync always on) as a side effect.

But basically this, combined with installing fring to Device memory and not the My Storage internal 16Gb card, lets me keep fring connected all the time to receive call-in calls over 3G. The status of my contacts in fring is not updated until I activate the app from standby, but the connection is kept regardless. I also updated my ROM to DXHI1, but this also seemed to work with my previous ROM DXHH3 PDA and XXHG5 Radio.

As always with any registry changes, apply at your own risk.

PS I also applied the registry hacks outlined in post #29 of this thread: http://www.fring.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2126&page=3

[Guest Geronymous]

Thanks for the info...

If I remember well I was able to install fring and use it from the beginning, without any special registry changes.

The issue I had is that the call quality (to my Skype contacts or external numbers through VoipDiscount) was terrrible... so I uninstalled it again. Sjphone was giving me far better call quality.

If I remember well I was connecting through Wifi, which we know is not so fast on the Omnia... maybe I should try with 3G.

Can you confirm that your call quality is OK, and through which service(s)?

[Guest Quist09]

Thanks for the info...

If I remember well I was able to install fring and use it from the beginning, without any special registry changes.

The issue I had is that the call quality (to my Skype contacts or external numbers through VoipDiscount) was terrrible... so I uninstalled it again. Sjphone was giving me far better call quality.

If I remember well I was connecting through Wifi, which we know is not so fast on the Omnia... maybe I should try with 3G.

Can you confirm that your call quality is OK, and through which service(s)?

Thanks for your PM. Figured I'd answer here if anyone else is interested.

Keep in mind that I'm looking for a solution that I can have on and connected 24/7. Last time I tested battery drain on SJPhone, it was 10% per 30 minutes meaning a battery life of 5 hours. SJPhone is great for calling out (better call quality), but waiting for incoming calls at any time isn't really feasible. fring's thin client solution is much easier on the system than SJPhone or Skype and with these reghacks the connection is kept on standby as well as SJPhone or Skype forcing the phone not to go into standby.

For me, fring worked for outgoing calls without any reghacks, but I still had the problems I outlined in the first post that were showstoppers. Quality was OK, except for the delay inherent in their solution, and the low sound. Sound problems have been fixed by a combo of the sound solution for the Omnia on this site combined with the CANEC hacks on the fring forum (see my PS above). To be honest I have yet to do a full blown test of quality, but in a tight situation the other day, I tried using Skype, but the call was all over the place. Switching to fring, the delay was bigger, but the sound was crystal clear.

Once I'm done getting my battery in shape, I'll be running some subjective quality tests and will post my results in the next few days.

[Guest kslakhani]

really nice work, w

ill give it a try

[Guest Geronymous]

Once I'm done getting my battery in shape, I'll be running some subjective quality tests and will post my results in the next few days.

Hi Quist09, did you get to make some test about the quality of the calls in the end?

I have tried the CANEC hack (well, the FesAgcLevel part of it, the EnableSmallSpeaker doesn't seem to be needed for the Omnia), but don't really see an improvement... the main issue seems to be the volume/quality of sound coming from the Omnia microphone (so I can hear pretty OK, but people can hardly hear me). As far as I can see, microphone settings are not controlled by the hacks in the sticky volume post, right? And I don't see microphone sensitivity settings in the Omnia settings...

Any other ideas?

[Guest Quist09]

Hi Quist09, did you get to make some test about the quality of the calls in the end?

I have tried the CANEC hack (well, the FesAgcLevel part of it, the EnableSmallSpeaker doesn't seem to be needed for the Omnia), but don't really see an improvement... the main issue seems to be the volume/quality of sound coming from the Omnia microphone (so I can hear pretty OK, but people can hardly hear me). As far as I can see, microphone settings are not controlled by the hacks in the sticky volume post, right? And I don't see microphone sensitivity settings in the Omnia settings...

Any other ideas?

Not sure what to tell you in terms of the microphone settings. I did get a chance to have a 35 minute call home over 3G (Europe-US) and can only say that things on my end sounded better than they ever did on any of my other phones (Nokia E61, Nokia N95 8GB, TyTN) or with other settings. My father on the other end (who is half deaf) didn't seem to have any problem hearing me, which is unusual. The time lag was ever present, but we've pretty much gotten used to it. Otherwise the only times I've been able to try to test the microphone on my own is when I've called the test number in the middle of the night and have had to whisper to keep from waking my kids up, so that didn't really tell me anything. If I call myself from my home phone, the feedback echo forces me to hang up within a few seconds.

Otherwise, I realized I was so focused on my reghacks that I hadn't properly tested battery life with HI1 without them, but with fring on all the time. Battery life seemed to improve markedly, but on multiple occasions I noticed fring had lost connectivity. So I entered my reghacks again and haven't seen a disconnect yet. Strangely, the battery life improvement seems to have been maintained.

That said, if your interested in using the reghacks, I'd suggest you don't make the registry changes immediately after a hardreset. Let fring run with the normal settings for a few days to let the battery monitor software calibrate (combine this with a couple full discharges/recharges for good measure). Then once things have settled down on that front, enable the reghacks.

In terms of the microphone, I wonder if that hidden settings app refered to in the sticky isn't just a simplified way of changing registry entries. That said, one would think we could find the right registry keys and fiddle with them.

[Guest Quist09]

I'm a doof sometimes. I realized late in the game that the connection cut offs in fring that I've experienced of late may be related to my connecting the unit to the usb-port on occasion. fring automatically wants to connect to the Internet via the usb and the connection cycles. When you disconnect it from the usb, of course it needs some time to reconnect via 3G. I'm not sure how long after I disconnected it from usb that I noticed no fring connection, but they may be related.

I confirmed the battery drain of my reghacks in the first post above, but have to go back and test the connection again without them. I'll get back to this thread in a couple of days to say what I've found.

[Guest itb44]

Thanks for the good tips! I have an Omnia i910. I've tried Skype, SJPhone, XLite and Fring.

Fring: microphone gain too low and sounds like I'm talking through a pillow -- anyone know how to fix?

Skype: microphone much better, but earpiece speaker won't work -- anyone have fix?

SJPhone: Version PPC2003SE-303c can't even register with SIP -- which version did you use?

XLite: Can't register with SIP (although different version XLite running on PC via same wifi registers without any problem).