The Backdoor Man - Hacks, Freaks and other Fun

Jason Lackey

One of the cool things about technology is that the more you know the more fun it gets. Who can forget their first easter egg or hack or cool trick, be it typing xyzzy in the original Collosal Cave Adventure (Welcome to Adventure. Woul you like instructions?) or the flight simulator imbedded in Excel 97, there always was a sense of wonder and joy at finding such things.

Some "secrets" are fairly well known, such as the following Nokia commands which often work on other handsets:

*#06# - display IMEI
*#0000# - Software version:
*#7780# - Restores default settings
*#7370# - Factory reset (may need additional code 12345)
*#92702689# - life timer info & other stuff depending on device
*#2820#: Display the Bluetooth device address
*#62209526#: mac address of the wifi card

Other secrets are less well know. Anders Borg, of Abiro - Mobile News, writes about a couple Sony Ericsson codes for OSE-based phones:

#speedy (#773339) then down arrow x4 - turns on HSDPA
#outofcash (#688632274) then down arrow x4 - no cost data (!)