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Trawling howardforums.com can bring up some pretty useful stuff sometimes. A few minutes ago, I figured out how to get the ‘Instant Messages’ part of my messaging menu to do something useful. So without further delay, here’s my short guide to setting up IM/Wireless Village on your Nokia 6230i running on the Hutch network. The basics should work on other IM-enabled phones as well, and with some translation, your SonyEricsson or Motorola phone should work just fine with other carriers. I’m pretty sure BPL Mobile will work by modifying the proxy configuration.

1. At the least, make sure you have WAP-based web access on your mobile phone, and that you can browse your provider’s home page. The proxy bits of this guide assume WAP access.
2. Get yourself an account at Yamigo
3. Go to Settings -> Configuration -> Personal Configuration
4. Press the soft button for ‘Options’ and select ‘Add new’
5. Select ‘IM and Presence’
6. Use the following settings: Account Name: Yamigo Server Address: http://yamigo.com/wv/control UserID: (the id you created on yamigo.com) Password: (your yamigo.com account password) Use Preferred Access Point: No
7. Now click on ‘Access Point’ Settings: Proxy: Enabled Proxy Address: 10.10.1.100 Proxy Port: 9401
8. In the ‘Bearer settings’ submenu: GPRS Access Point: portalnmms Authentication type: Normal User Name: (blank) Password: (blank)

That completes the setup. You can now use your Yamigo account to enable ‘My Presence’ in the phonebook menu, as well as use ‘Instant Messages’ in the messaging menu. I’ve successfully used Yahoo and MSN using this setup. Contact list management is quite flaky, but it’s great to allow others to contact you via IM when on the road. When used with a flat-rate plan like Hutch has at Rs 99 per month, this is just super. Cheaper than their own Yahoo! Messenger alerts, even! Rishi confirms that this works on his SonyEricsson K700i as well.

Update 28/10: As of yesterday, this doesn’t work anymore for me. However, www.smartvas.com works, but offers only MSN service with no contact list download. I don’t know for sure if it’s Hutch throwing a spanner in the works, but it’s likely, since they offer Yahoo! IM mobile service for a fee.

Update 15/11: Yamigo has been back up for some time now, and seems to work fine.