Google does believe in Easter after all. Apparently after a late night of eating cake in Zurich, the Mobile App Team at Google felt the need to add a few extra “Bells and Whistles” to Google Mobile App. The kicker is they hid the menu to these features and “neglected” to tell anyone about it. Last week on News Years Day they came clean by announcing the moApp Easter Egg for the iPhone. The post entitled “Ring in the New Year with Bells and Whistles” on Google Mobile Blog gives a little back story and a general outline on how to enable this feature in Google’s moApp. I really hope the announcement was their way of continuing the Easter Egg tradition they started last new years.

For the record, the Bells and Whistles feature was discovered prior to last week’s announcement from Google, which is contrary to what some have already posted. Chris Messina of Citizen Agency (twitter @factoryjoe) posted his discovery on Waxy.org, the blog of Andy Baio the founder of upcoming.org. Chris noted the different options listed in the Preferences.plist xml file under the kGMOPrefGroupSecretSettings node on Nov 18, 2008 almost a month and half prior to Google’s 1/1/09 announcement and only four days after the release of Google moApp version 0.3.144 which included the Easter Egg.

Google’s post is a little vague on how to access or activate these new features. Since their post leaves a few unanswered questions I thought I would take a moment to put together a Step by Step guide on how to unlock the Bells and Whistles Easter Egg in Google’s Mobile Application on your Apple 3G iPhone.

Step by Step Guide to Opening Bells and Whistles Menu

1. Tap the Google moApp icon on your iPhone. Visit the App Store icon on your iPhone and search for ‘Google Mobile App’ or visit the iTunes store if you do not have it yet.
   
2. Tap on the Settings icon, located on the lower right hand side of the page.
   
3. Here’s where the suggested perseverance from the mobile team comes in to play… once the Settings screen loads start flicking the screen in an up ward motion.
   
4. Don’t stop until you see the new Bells & Whistles button appear below the About Button.
   
5. Don’t give up! Based on my testing, it took about 100 short quick flicks before the button appeared. When I tried it again and it seemed to show up quicker if I did long sweeping stroke.
   

Bells and Whistles Summary

• Theme Color – Let’s you select a different theme color for Google’s moApp interface.
  
• Sounds – Let’s you change the feedback sounds when using the voice recognition search functionality. Your two new options are Chicken and Monkey. I went with Monkey.
  
• Live Waveform – Turning on Live Waveform displays the signal pattern of your voice as you are speaking into the iPhone while performing a Voice Search vs. showing you just the static pattern when analyzing your request.
  
• Open Links in App – This option let’s you open search result links within the Google moApp interface instead of launching Safari. This is the most useful feature contained within the Easter Egg. Unfortunately it this option does not seem to affect the links within the App area. Let me know if I’m doing something wrong. 
  

I hope you found this helpful. I really do hope this is truly a new tradition for Google. If so, i’m look forward to next years New Year’s Easter Egg Hunt presented by Google.

I was excited that AT&T finally released the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for my Blackjack because I thought it was never going to happen. I was also hoping AT&T learned a lesson after the original release and would address some of the outstanding issues like extending Bluetooth functionality. It looks like AT&T didn’t learn a thing and let some marketing dude remove Internet Connection Sharing from Mobile 6 for the Blackjack so they could charge for it instead. Why must AT&T be so greedy? No worries, I have some good news. A savor with the screen name chudy2 stepped up and created a hack to help the masses get their ICS back.

Connect Your Laptop to a AT&T Blackjack & Use It As A Modem
The following instructions were pulled from howardforums.com. This process was developed by one of the forum members named chudy2. It appears most people have been able to set ICS up with no issues. Make sure you do your own research. It is important you feel comfortable with making these kind of changes to your phone.

Standard Disclaimer: I must state that I take no responsibility for the actions of anyone reading this blog. If something of yours breaks because you did something I talked about, it’s your fault, not mine. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

How’s your confidence, are you ready to pull this off?

1. First and foremost you’ll need to application unlock your phone. Read my earlier post on how to unlock your Blackjack. If you do not unlock your phone none of the following recommendations will work.
2. Reset your phone.
3. Download the following file to your computer by right clicking the file name and select Save Target As. WARNING: If you download this file using IE you might have to change the file extension from .ics to .cab before saving it.
   •  Download: BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable.cab (89.6 KB)
4. Install the BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable cab file (it might ask you to reboot)
5. Navigate to \My Documents and click on the certs.cab file
6. RESET THE DEVICE!
7. Go to start and run internet sharing.

Let me know if you have any issues. 

What’s Internet Connection Sharing or ICS?
You may wonder why you need ICS on Samsung Blackjack. I hope the following helps answer that question. Internet Connection Sharing enables you to access the Internet by connecting your computer laptop to your Blackjack phone.  This is also referred to as “tethering” your device to your cell phone. As long as you have a data plan, it negates the need for you to purchase an extra cellular modem. ICS also allows for Mac & Linux users to connect to the Blackjack since they don’t have ActiveSync.

So you want to unlock your Samsung Blackjack? Unlocking your Blackjack cell phone will give the ability to put the SIM card from any carrier in it so you can use on their network. This will let you use the incredible Blackjack on Sprint if you want too. Now you can go overseas and use a pay as you go SIM from a local carrier. Cool right?

I know my earlier post on “How to Perform an Application Unlock on the Blackjack” caused some confusion because some of you thought I was talking about a SIM unlock. I’m hoping this information helps.

How to Unlock Your Blackjack:

1. First you’ll need to get your Network Control Key. The Network Control Key is a 8 digits unlock code. There are two paths to get your NCK. You can either call AT&T or ask for it. You may have to ask them to put you through to their tech department.  If you’ve never signed up for AT&T’s Service they may not give the code because your not a customer. The other way to get the code is to contact a cell phone unlocking service. They usually charge around $20 to get this code for you.
2. Once you get the Network Control Key power off the phone.
3. Remove the SIM card.
4. Power on the phone back on.
5. Enter #7465625*638*
6. Enter Network Control Key.
7. Press “OK” Soft key, not the Send or OK hard key.
8. Power off the phone.
9. Reinsert the new SIM card.

Based on the response from people that have tried this I assume it works. I have no need to unlock my phone because I live in the States and I enjoy using AT&T as my services provider. So please let me know if this does not work on either the original Samsung Blackjack or the Blackjack II. Good luck!

I know I’m little late to the game on this, works been busy… I just found out Windows Mobile 6 has finally been released for the Blackjack. I plan on upgrading tonight and will write a full review later. It looks as though Samsung has written a good “How Do I Upgrade My Blackjack to Win Mobile 6?” guide. I haven’t read any reviews on it yet, so I hope it’s rockin’.

You can safely overclock your Samsung Blackjack up to 252 MHz.  The default processor speed for the Blackjack is 216 MHz. I haven’t heard of anyone having issues once they overclock the phone. I’ve had mine overclocked for weeks with no problems. I bumped mine to run at 240MHz and have seen very little impact on the battery life of my phone. Don’t just take my word for it Google It (Overclock Blackjack) and do your own research to make sure you are comfortable with this.

Standard Disclaimer: I must state that I take no responsibility for the actions of anyone reading this blog. If something of yours breaks because you did something I talked about, it’s your fault, not mine. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

You may ask yourself… How can I overclock my Samsung Blackjack? Let me explain how…

1. First and foremost you’ll need to unlock your phone. Read my earlier post on how to unlock your Blackjack. If you do not unlock your phone none of the following recommendations will work.
2. Now that your phone is prepped for overclocking you’ll need to download a few applications. From the research I’ve done, there are a hundred ways to do this, but a developer by the name of Tom Gech has created a nifty little application to speed up the process and make overclocking your Blackjack a breeze. Tom created a program called OmapClockPlus which is a helper file for an application called OmapClock. OmapClock does the actual overclocking of your phone, here’s the readme file translated from Russian. You’ll need both these applications to set up continuous overclocking on your Blackjack. Go to this post on forum.xda-developers.com and download the following (2) files:
   • OmapClock & OmapClockPlus Manual Installation.zip (13.4 KB)
   • OmapClockPlus_Wm_Smartphone.zip (4.3 KB)
3. Unzip OmapClock & OmapClockPlus Manual Installation.zip
4. Unzip OmapClockPlus_Wm_Smartphone.zip
5. Create an “OmapClock” folder in the “Program Files” folder on your Blackjack (e.g. \Program Files\OmapClock) and then copy the OmapClock.exe and OmapClockPlus.exe from the OmapClockPlus_Wm_Smartphone.zip file to this location.
6. By default the overclock speed for this setup is 240MHz. If you want to increase the speed to 252MHz open the File: OmapClock.lnk with NotePad or some other text editor and change the “-clock 240″ to “-clock 252″ and hit save.
7. Copy the OmapClock.lnk file to the Startup folder on your Blackjack. (e.g. \Windows\Startup)
8. Download the following file by right click the following link and click “Save Target As…”. Download File: OmapClock Shortcuts.zip . Unzip and copy the two files to your Blackjack’s Start Menu folder. (e.g. \Windows\Start Menu\Applications)
9. Launch OmapClockPlus (e.g. Start > Applications > OmapClockPlus) and click “Register” once OmapClockPlus opens.
10. Exit & restart your Blackjack. That’s it! If you want to make sure everything took go to OmapClock (e.g.  Start > Applications > OmapClock) and it should say “Current Clock: 252 MHz”.

I hope find this helpful & happy overclocking!

Before you can optimize and configure your Blackjack to run at optimal speeds you must first app unlock the thing. App unlocking means you can run unsigned 3rd party software on your Blackjack. If you don’t application unlock it’s security settings, any changes you make that is registry based, will not be saved.

NEW: Please note this not a SIM Card Unlock, this is an Application Unlock. Please read the post “Unlocking the Blackjack SIM Card” to learn how to do this.

Here is the easy steps:

1. Download and install Device Security Manager Powertoy for Windows Mobile 5.0 from Microsoft. This is a nifty utility to show what security policy is in effect. If you connect your Blackjack to your PC, you’ll see two tier security policy is in effect.

2. Download and copy secpolicies.cab to your Blackjack using ActiveSync. I got this from sems.org who got it from Telus support, after following a post on qusers.com.

3. Run and install it. This allows you to install third party SSL Root Certs.

4. If you run Device Security Manager Powertoy for Windows Mobile 5.0 now (it is listed in Start – Programs as “Security Configuration Manager”, you’ll see now you are using One Tier Prompt. Select Security Off and click Provision. It will install tool.cab to your device and then provision the settings.

These instructions are based on the ones found for the Motorola Q provided by sem.org.