So there I was trying out a batch of the very latest S60 hardware. The 6680, the N70, all the units with what Nokia call their 'Active standby' screen. So, rather than having a static image alone, you get a row of handy shortcuts to your five most used applications. Plus a summary of the day's appointments, but it was the extra launcher shortcuts that caught my eye. I wonder how I could mimic this on my venerable Nokia 6630 (or indeed on any other older Series 60 smartphone)?
Now, most people don't realise this, but there are already four one-keypress shortcuts on the Standby screen, each attached to one point of the navigator 'compass'. So pressing navigator 'up' launches one application, and so on. You can allocate which press launches which application using 'Settings | Phone | Standby mode'. But the problem is - and this is also the reason why most people don't use these keypresses - is that it's hard to remember which application you assigned to which keypress.
So, in a moment of (ahem) alcohol-fuelled lateral thinking, I wondered why the standby screen wallpaper shouldn't be used as an aide memoire? For example, popping into Windows Paint (or similar) and making a 176 by 144 pixel image along the lines of:
Now pop it over to the smartphone by Bluetooth or over the USB link and set it to my wallpaper (in Image manager on the 6630, but it's a Settings option on many older devices):
Not bad. Now, of course, this is only an image, you can make one to any design you fancy. Taking a background image at random:
Not a very 'active' standby screen, but it'll give you confidence to launch four favourite applications from the navigator key on your not-quite-so-cutting-edge Series 60 smartphones.