Hacked My S60 Nokia Phone and Removed the Useless Search On The Main Screen… Sort Of

July 4th, 2008 • Mark Guim • Filed Under •

A topic I haven’t talked about here on the Nokia blog is about hacking S60. I never really understood it or saw the point, but I tried it today to remove that useless search tool on the main display of the Nokia N95 8GB. In essence, hacking your S60-powered phones like the Nokia Nseries and Eseries devices lets you install unsigned applications and apply patches. The bad thing about it is the changes applied by the patch needs to be reapplied every time the phone is restarted.

There’s no option to remove the Search on the active display. I don’t use it and don’t really want it on my main screen. I rather use the Google Search app.

So here are the pictures before and after the hack.

Before:

Nokia N95 8GB

After

Nokia N95 8GB

Hack Your S60

Want to hack your S60 Nokia phone? Go to Symbian-Freak’s Modding forums for instructions on hacking S60 and using the ROMPatcher. I have not found any other useful patches other than being able to remove the search from the active display screen. Maybe more useful patches will come out in the future. The changes are gone and need to be reapplied if you restart your phone. Is it worth it? Eh.

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  • BionicFresh
    i'm gonna re-ask a question Flag asked previously cuz i saw no response to it.

    Can you please tell me what are the *32 and the bubble icon with 0 for?
  • Pic
    Nokia E51 disaster
    I wanted a phone with video out capability at a reasonable price. Seen on the nokia wesite that the E51 had "2.5 mm Nokia A/V connector" on the phone so after purchase tried to hook this up but no joy.
    i have now had more of a look arround the internet and it seem the phone wont do as i want it to. So what dose the A/V "V" stand for if not audio/Video.
    There is a hack website that may be able to supply Factory Settings code maybe vodafone have disabled prior to my purchase. not happy
  • IA
    Hi,

    Can you please tell me what are the *32 and the bubble icon with 0 for? What application bring them?

    IA
  • Hi Mark, i'm Michael, Moderator over at Symbian Freak ..

    thought you'll find those Links usefull:
    this is another Solution for Hacking the Phone, A LOT easier in my opinion, with Screens and everything.

    Index about some of the Patches, our Guys over at SF has developed, maybe some of your Guys find it usefull.

    Maybe you can remember, i was the former Member of the nokian-blog.com ..

    Cheers
    Michael
  • James Powell
    Would it be possible to add active standby plugins like those on the eseries to display unread text messages etc. for example?

    Could the files to do this be copied from an Nseries to Eseries device for example?
  • Mr. X I hope to see more come out of this. Now I see the potential of hacking S60.
  • There's an autostart version of ROMPatcher available meaning that you don't need to apply patches on each restart. This particular patch still requires that you turn active standby on and off, though.

    If you haven't seen them already, here are some other patches that some may find useful(when autostarted):

    1)Disable camera shutter sound, even if your firmware doesn't allow it.
    2)Disable Java security warnings.
    3)Using voice command to open any application you want.
    4)Allowing any other application instead of the browser to be opened by holding down '0'.
  • Devilywan
    i will try this one too..i never use that search..
  • I hate that search too ... have to try this.
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