Replacing the battery on N9 is not an easy job but with the correct tools it can be done with a reasonable effort. The battery model is BV-5JW (1450mAh 3.8V 5.5Wh). Same battery is used also in Lumia 800 phones and it seems to be still readily available.

There is a good youtube video showing how the battery can be replaced: Nokia N9 Disassembly & Assembly – Battery & Case Replacement by LE55ONS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9u7r4j0atU

By following the instructions I managed to replace the battery and even managed to assemble all the parts back together. 🙂

I also did a full reflash according to my earlier post. This I did mainly to see how hard it would be to setup everything like before now that there is no more official support available (as Nokia store and other support services have been shut down already some time ago).

Currently maybe the best place to go for N9 applications is the OpenRepos site. To get started you need to first allow application installation from uncertified sources. Just go to Settings>Applications>Installations and enable the setting “Allow installations from non-Store sources”. Then you can head to the OpenRepos site and install the needed support packages. First you will need to replace the obsolete Nokia repositories with the new community maintained mirrors. This can be done by installing the package N9 RepoMirror from:

https://openrepos.net/content/ancelad/n9-repomirror

After that you can also enable the developer mode that requires some additional downloads from the repositories (e.g. the terminal application). An automatic reboot follows the installation.

Then you can install the Warehouse application from the page:

http://openrepos.net/content/basil/warehouse

One nice feature with the OpenRepos site and the replacement mirror repositories is that you can receive software updates like before. You will get a notification that an update is available and then install the update. E.g. after I had the new repo mirrors defined I got updates to Twitter (v1.3.95), Facebook (v1.4.0-1), Real-Golf (V1.2.2) and Nokia Link (v0.1.13) applications.

Login to N9 with SSH

If you need to edit configuration files on N9 often the easiest way to accomplish this is to login to N9 with SSH. On windows you can install the PuTTY tool, on linux the ssh client should be available by default.

After enabling the developer mode you should have the terminal application available (assuming the N9 RepoMirror was installed earlier). Fire up the terminal and change the user password.

$ devel-su
Password: rootme
# passwd user
New password: ******
Re-enter new password: ******
# <ctrl-D>
$ <ctrl-D>

Next start the SDK Connectivity tool and select the connection type (USB or WLAN) and note the IP address. Start the ssh client on your PC and connect to the given IP address. Enter ‘user’ as the user name and the newly created password. You should now be logged into the N9 and you can use the nano editor (or vi) to edit files.

To make things even easier you could install WinSCP to your PC and then use the graphical user interface to drag and drop files between the PC and the N9.

Enabling the Maps and Drive applications

The navigation applications require a Nokia account. And now that the Nokia account servers are no longer available the applications refuse to start. Fortunately there is an easy fix to correct this. The application configuration folder on N9 (/home/user/.config/Nokia) contains two configuration files: Maps.conf and Drive.ini that need a small update.

In Drive.ini (GeneralSettings section) change: ssoDone=true and in Maps.conf (General section) change isSsoEnabled=false.

[GuidanceSettings]
voiceSkin=9002
speedWarner=true
speedWarnerAudio=true
lowSpeedOffset=0
highSpeedOffset=0

[GeneralSettings]
unitSystem=metric
ssoDone=true
appVersion=2.0.8+0m8
allowConnections=true
traffic=false

[General]
rebootMode=0
isSsoEnabled=false
applicationState=normal

[places]
shareBaseURI=http://m.ovi.me
searchURI=http://where.desktop.mos.svc.ovi.com/NOSe/json
suggestionsURI=http://where.desktop.mos.svc.ovi.com/NOSe/json
placesURI=http://places.maps.ovi.com/rest/v1/places/
recommendationsURI=http://avalon.mobile.recommendations.maps.svc.ovi.com/rest/v1/recommendations/nearby/

[odml]
odmlBaseURI=http://static.maploader.maps.svc.ovi.com/map5/

[sso]
ssoType=production

[nps]
feedbackEnv=prd

Maps can still be updated (in April 2016 at least). I managed to update all my default offline maps (Northern Europe) to v0.2.54.223.

Disable Nokia account login prompt

As the Nokia account servers are no longer available, it makes no sense to prompt for the account login each time the N9 is restarted. You can disable the prompt by removing the execute (‘x’) permission from the ovi-startup script:

 chmod -x /usr/bin/ovi-startup 

Enable automatic network connection

Under the settings page you can define how the phone will connect to different networks. Go to Settings>Internet connection>Edit networks. There you can select which networks will be automatically used and which ones manually. Unfortunately this does not work any more because it requires a working connection to connectivity-test.ext.nokia.com and (you guessed it) the server is not longer running. BUT: there is an easy fix. Just open the terminal and edit the file /etc/hosts. Add one line the redefines the server to point to connectivity-test.ext.maemo.org.

213.128.137.20 connectivity-test.ext.nokia.com

Install apps from OpenRepos

OpenRepos has already quite a nice selection of apps available. To get started I installed a small set of apps that I have found useful before.

And of course we can now remove the ovi store application. Use the terminal app:

$ devel-su

# apt-get remove ovistoreclient

But be careful out there. According to the comments below you might easily remove a lot of applications at the same time (apparently if they depend on the ovistoreclient). However, there should be a confirmation step before the files are removed. Please check the items to be removed before proceeding.

Enable A-GPS

One more change that you may want to do is to update the A-GPS server. It seems the default server supl.nokia.com is no longer up and running which leads to a very slow GPS fix. Luckily we can easily replace the default server and use e.g. supl.google.com. Just edit the file /etc/xdg/nokia/location-settings.conf:

PrimarySuplServer=supl.google.com
PrimarySuplAllowHome=true
PrimarySuplAllowRoaming=true
PrimarySuplOnlyGprs=false
SecondarySuplServer=supl.nokia.com
SecondarySuplAllowHome=true
SecondarySuplAllowRoaming=true
SuplForced=true

Define user directory locations

This step may be needed if you cannot see images saved from email (or multimedia) messages in the gallery app. The default save locations for downloads, pictures, videos etc. are defined in the file /home/user/.config/user-dirs.dirs.

Here are the default contents for the file:

# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/MyDocs"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/MyDocs/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/MyDocs"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/MyDocs"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/MyDocs/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/MyDocs/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/MyDocs/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/MyDocs/Movies"