- A Look At S60 Menu Organization – Part I
- A Look At S60 Menu Organization – Part 2
- A Look At S60 Menu Organization – Part 3
One of the cool things about what I do is that I get a chance to play with a *ton* of cell phones, from all different manufacturers, but I also get to see a steady stream of S60-powered handsets. Mind you, the majority of them are for review only, and I have to send them back after a certain period. However, one thing that I’ve noticed is that it seems as though, still, each Nokia S60 device that I get has the menus organized in a completely willy-nilly way, and each one is different from the one before.
What makes this worse is that none of them are anywhere close to logical, at least in my eyes. I’ve been organizing my S60 menus the same way since the 6620, with a few changes over the years. I’ve recently had a few discussions about this, so I want to do a three-part look at this out of the box menu organization of S60, and offer some ideas on how to make it better.
Starting out, I want to take a look in my ‘Crap’ folder, which, thanks to S60v3 Feature Pack 1, I’m able to hide within the ‘Tools’ folder, so it’s not mucking up my main menu. The ‘Crap’ folder is simply a place for things which have no place, are redundant, or I simply don’t really need/use.
So what’s in there?
1. 1-touch – Cnce it’s setup, I don’t need it
2. 3-D Tones – Absolutely useless
3. Voice Comm – Don’t use
4. Device Mgr – Never used
5. Settings Wizard – Never used
6. Switch – Used maybe 3 times since I’ve owned S60 phones, though I’ve heard it works great
7. Help – Never used
8. About – Never used
9. Contacts – I keep this as my first app on Active Standby, so it’s redundant to have in the menu
10. Gallery – As much as I hate it, my N95 has a direct button to this, so it’s redundant to have elsewhere
11. Log – The ‘send’ button pulls this up, so again, redundant
12. File Manager – I prefer Y-Browser, so I don’t need this in my menus
13. Connection Manager – Never used
14. Calendar – Active Standby has this always up, so it’s redundant
15. Camera – Dedicated camera key makes this redundant on the N95-3
16. Actv. Keys – Never used
17. MyNokia – Apparently isn’t available in the U.S., though it was added to the latest N95-3 firmware. Brilliant.
18. Lifeblog – Haven’t used since I moved to WordPress
19. Music Store – Again, not available in the U.S., yet added to the latest N95-3 firmware. Why?
Whew! Quite the list, no? As you can see, the list is mostly made up of apps that are either 1. completely unnecessary to consumers (Help, About, etc) or are made redundant by some dedicated key or shortcut. And yet, from the factory, this ‘Crap’ folder doesn’t even exist – these apps are sprinkled throughout my phone willy-nilly.
So, now you’re wondering, if all these apps are in my ‘Crap’ folder, how is everything else organized? I’m glad you asked. Check back tomorrow for Part 2, where I go through my main menu screen, and explain the logic that I use to organize my apps, and why I think all S60 handsets should come with that type of organization.
