Intro to Symbian S60 Phones
This was originally posted back in November, at the start of Symbian-Guru.com, but it’s a great walkthrough of S60 for the beginner, so I wanted to repost it. As always, if you have a request for how to use a certain feature of your phone, or all the ins-and-outs of a certain piece of software, please email The Guru and I’ll make sure it gets covered for you.
This first entry is just a quick run-down of how to use the most basic features of your phone. Organizing the menu, viewing your memory details, and other important but often overlooked details will be shown. Click the link below to get to the meat.
A quick review of the buttons:
The
blue swirly one is your menu key. You can press this once to take you
to your main menu. You can also press and hold this to pull up a list
of currently running applications. If you wish to exit one of these,
you can do so by pressing the "C" button. If you are currently using an
application and wish to minimize it, or send it to the background,
press the menu key twice quickly (similar to "double-clicking" on a PC).
The
end/send keys are quite obvious in their uses, but note that the end
key will also exit a program if you press it while in the program.
The
"ABC" button, or on some newer phones it simply has a pencil is your
editing key. With it you can quickly choose between traditional typing,
T9 Predictive text, and numeric input. You can also press and hold it,
select a block of text, and then notice the "copy" and "paste" commands
that appear. This can be handy for web addresses and such. Another
function of this key is for marking several items. For instance, if you
have 30 emails and you wish to delete some of them, you can press and
hold the pencil key and move down with the d-pad or joystick, and it
will select multiple items for you. Very handy!
The "C" button is
quite obvious, as well. It deletes characters as you’re typing, and you
can press and hold it to delete multiple. You can also quickly delete a
program or media file with it.
Shifting into the UI:
You can set your idle
screen up in one of two ways, either with Active Standby on or off.
This setting is found under Settings>Phone Settings>Display
Settings>Standby/Idle. If you choose on, then a row of shortcuts
line the top of your screen, and below them will be any to-do or
calendar items that you have coming up. Unfortunately, there are no
options for how many days ahead it shows, nor for turning it off if you
have no appointments. The shortcuts up top, though, can be set to just
about anything on your phone, including web bookmarks and 3rd party
applications. If you choose to have Active Standby off, then you are
able to set the function of each of the five directions of the
d-pad/joystick. Up, down, left, right, and center. Just as the Active
Standby, these can be nearly anything on the phone.
Now on to the Main Menu.
The
main menu is setup like a grid. Those items can either be navigated to
and clicked on, or you can simply press the number corresponding to it.
For example, in this screenshot, Applications would be 5 (counting from
the top left, and going across like you would read a book).
You can
also view the menu in a list-form by pressing the left softkey and
choosing "change view" to list. This will show a rolling list of 6
items, again, navigable by number. The cool thing about the menu on
your S60 phone is that you can move it around however you wish! You can
create and delete folders, and move the icons about freely.
Creating a new folder:
To create a new folder,
simply press the left softkey (options) and scroll down to New Folder.
Type in a name for your folder and wa-la! The folder will appear at the
bottom of your menu list. To move this folder to a different position,
simply highlight it and press options. Choose "move" and a checkmark
appears next to the icon. You can then move the cursor around to where
you want the folder/program, and press ok. It will place the selected
item to the right of where the cursor was.
Filling a folder:
To
put programs into your folder (or move them from an existing folder),
simply highlight the program and select options, only this time go down
to "move to folder". The first option, Main, is your main menu. Simply
move up and down the list till you find the folder you want to put it
in, and click "ok." Done!
Also in the main menu, under options, is one called "Memory
Details." This is a quick glance at your memory situation, both phone
and external. It will not only show how much is used and free, but it
will also break down where the memory is being used at. A very handy
feature if you’re running low!
*Please note that from now on I will only reference the
title of the program, as you move your menus around, they will look
very different from mine, and you may have to do some searching to find
the same program.*
In the "Tools" folder, there are two apps which you will use
often. The first is called "File Manager." This is a very crude file
manager that can access your Phone and External Memory, and can be used
to move files around and between the two. I would suggest you download
and install Y-Browser for a better file management experience.
The
next is "App Manager." This is a list of all the programs and themes
that are currently installed on your device. Themes can only be deleted
through this menu. Programs can be deleted through this menu, or by
simply pressing "C" when you have them highlighted in the menu system.
In the options menu, you have the following:
*View Details, which can tell you details about the app
*Send feature, so you can share your apps easily with your friends.
*Open,
which allows you to set what permissions the various programs have.
(these are not universal, and must be individually set for each
program.) (Also, this option only appears for Java programs.
There you go. You now have a rudimentary beginning as to how to
operate your phone, and how to customize it to your liking. You can set
which shortcuts are on your idle screen, move things around in the main
menu to your heart’s content, and uninstall applications with ease.
Next week, I’ll do a complete walkthrough of installing an
application/game/theme, for those of you that are wondering how to do
that. It’s actually quite simple. Remember, anything that you’d like to
see in this section of Symbian-Guru.com, send me an email and I’ll be
glad to put it together.
I love the title, “Intro to Symbian S60 Phones” It sounds so official!