Nokia allowed people to receive 72x14, 1bpp pictures over a series of binary- or hex-encoded SMS messages, and have them show up instead of their carrier name on the home screen. In the 2000s, magazine ads and webpages would distribute them using premium-SMS.
This service, also featuring ringtones, games etc. has been revived, free of charge, by MtF hacker @Manawyrm@chaos.social of the Chaos Computer Club. You can go to Blåmba.de and download all kinds of content into your retro phone.
The service has been discussed in detail at her 38C3 talk: media.ccc.de / YouTube mirror
I also made 10 logos mostly related to Blåhaj, these are already in the Blåmba logo repository.
I welcome feedback and suggestions for future logos!
Wow these are so great thanks for sharing them
I love these and immediately went to dig out an old Nokia to try them but I can’t really seem to figure out how. Sending an SMS to register immediately responds with “die Kurzwahl ist nicht vergeben” (number not assigned).
It’s not very clear on the website or in the talk but Blåmba normally only runs on CCC event networks. However, if you privately chat with Manawyrm she can fire up her modem on a commercial network and send you the SMS manually. Make sure to know which operator (by MCC/MNC) the logo should be assigned to, you can’t store ones for other networks.
Without bothering Manawyrm, you can also try Ringtonetools (source-available program which Blåmba uses) to convert the pic into SCKL (hex-encoded) messages that can be sent from any phone, as opposed to the binary ones that are 2x more efficient but you need to directly interface with a GSM modem for.
I miss jailbreaking to grab a custom loader, now I see the apple logo for 2 seconds max so it eouldnt be worth it
These are more like wallpapers (although most phones that support them also support actual wallpapers and often also “screensavers”). The boot logo can be customized on some models by flashing a modified ROM using weird cables and programs that don’t work on modern Windows. Here is a video about the 3310 specifically
Ahh, this takes me back to the glory days of maxing out my prepaid SIM - on shopping pixels. Great work!
shit this is so cool, these phones are all pre-4G though right?
Yup. This will not work on Android, iOS or “post-J2ME” feature phones. However, we still have 2G in most of Europe so the old phones can be and often are still used.
What a nostalgia trip. I love it. I owned and used 3310 for several years back in early 2000s.
How did you end up drawing all of these? Do they serve a purpose or was it just an artistic pursuit?OP has already provided details in the post description.
The 3310 and other 84x48 LCD models are special in that they use a non-square pixel aspect ratio, approx. 7:8. Logos in green were designed for such phones and will look vertically squished on color screens, and vice-versa.
Those are marvellous and I got the retro bumps :D
These are amazing! I specially love the dithering effect you did in the RedHat logo!
Flood-filling with a pattern is very easy on a technical level, even Nokia 3410’s picture message editor can do that automatically. You lose half the resolution by area (pixels are basically √2 bigger on each side and in a 45° grid) to get a shade of grey. The hard part is knowing when such a sacrifice is worth it and when not (not often for a height of 14) and to guess or A/B test which phase of the pattern preserves most detail. Sometimes you want more complex dithering or even combined with an outline like the glossy FreeBSD logo.
always thought the Slackware logo didn’t have two ‘S’s’
I couldn’t fit the weirdly underlined 𝚂 in a circle so I combined the initial and logotype. Yes, probably should have omitted the 𝚜 like I did with ⓔlementary.
![[OC] Tech-Related "Operator Logos"](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChaoticNeutralCzech/myRandomImages/main/73logos.png){kind=link}