Active Standby Plugins

I've been a user of S60 phones since the 7650. I may have mentioned this before. One issue this causes is you become complacent. I rarely investigate the menu system more than searching out the settings I want to put in place to personalise the phone the way I like it. Dump all the icons I will never use into a Misc. folder, hide the Misc folder out of the way, and bring to the surface all the icons I ant quick access to. (One of the reasons I enjoy S60 so much is I have this flexible control over the phone menu)

Because of this complacency, it's possible you miss neat new features, buried away in the menu system where you never go anymore. Today I was looking through the menu system and I found such a neat, new feature. I mentioned a few posts ago that I would like to be able to hide the calendar entries on the home screen of my phone whilst keeping Active Standby turned on. Active Standby is an excellent feature, giving shortcuts to the most used applications directly from the home screen. But I don't always want calendar entries showing on the homescreen. I can set reminders for calendar entries I need to be notified of, I don't want them showing on my phone home screen a week in advance.

So, the point of this post? Finally, there is a S60 phone that allows you to hide the home screen calendar! I don't know if the other new ESeries phones will have this, or the new NSeries phones, but it is not there on an E60, or the N73. Navigate to the Tools menu>settings>phone>standby mode and scroll down the menu and you will find the Active Standby Plugins menu:


















Open this menu and you will see various plugin options:




































If I mark the organiser, and unmark the Wireless LAN:


















On the homescreen the WiFi scan is off and the calendar is shown:


















And alternatively, if I mark the WiFi scan and unmark calendar, only WiFi scan is shown:


















And, if both plugins are unmarked:


















All you see on screen are the Active Standby icons:


















The other plugins only show up when that particular option is actioned, such as new message or voicemail notifications. Finally, I can remove the calendar from the home screen! It's always the little things that make the difference in the end, and this is one feature I am very happy with. I hope Nokia include this on future handsets, and don't restrict it to just the E65.