Thursday, June 20, 2013

Tyranny of bad error messages

My Nokia phone (C7) comes pre-installed a software called JoikuSpot. This converts the phone into a wifi hotspot. I have the phone with me for a few years now, I had never used this functionality. The other day I enabled a temporary data plan on my phone. I decided to give the software  a try. After multiple attempts, I kept getting the error:
Unable to start JoikuSpot
I tried different settings, when to the FAQ page on JoikuSpot's website. It had a list of applications on the phone which interfere with JoikuSpot. I uninstalled all of them, but the error remained.

After spending almost an hour on this, I realized, the wifi on my phone was turned off! Could this be the reason? I enabled it and started JoikuSpot .... and it worked!! This made me wonder, I am sure there is an API on the Nokia Symbian S60 platform which lets you check if wifi is enabled or not. If only the error message had indciated that! 

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