One of the things that bothers me about the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is the Active Standby screen. Coming from the Nseries and Eseries families, it’s surprisingly bare. You have 4 application shortcuts, which is less than I’m used to, but I can deal with, since they’re larger and therefore more finger-friendly. There are also a handful of shortcuts hidden in the header area, where the clock and battery indicator is. Unfortunately, everything below these areas is basically empty, and just wasted space. Here’s a shot of the default Active Standby screen:
The Search application (which, for some reason, only searches the internet – it doesn’t search through the whole phone, like on Nseries or Eseries) takes up 3 rows of space, and you can’t even search in it from the homescreen. You must double-click on it, and then wait through the splash screen to get to the search box.
Below that is the calendar, with a 3-entry maximum. This also has a wasted bar of space above it, which is frustrating. Unfortunately, that’s all you get. If you have the music player open, you’ll have an entry for that, but there’s no WLAN wizard (which can be useful, on occasion), and there’s no sign of the Share Online standby bar.
Completely frustrated by this, I decided to give Handy Shell another go. We’ve covered Handy Shell before, and honestly, it’s a great product, but I wasn’t a fan of it on my non-touchscreen S60-powered phones. It just seemed a bit cramped, and didn’t really offer any real benefits over the default S60 Active Standby. Here’s a screenshot of it on the 5800:
Like magic, my homescreen is incredibly useful again. I now have 5 application shortcuts, instead of just 4 (and they’re still finger-friendly), and I also have a row of notification icons, allowing me quick access to Bluetooth, my SMS/MMS inbox, my email inbox, and profiles. The 5800 XpressMusic doesn’t have any usable 3rd party email clients (yet), so I’m suffering with the built-in messaging system.
Below that is my upcoming appointments list, though I’ve noticed that it doesn’t show recurring events, nor does it show events in the future – only those taking place today. This is clearly a personal preference, though. Handy Shell also comes with Handy Weather, which provides me with weather information, right there on my homescreen. It’s very nice, and again, finger-friendly.
Below this is where it gets really good – there are THREE buttons across the bottom of the screen – home, applications, and contacts. Home, clearly, takes me back to the homescreen. Applications, unfortunately, doesn’t take me to the default S60 menu, but rather to the built-in applications menu on Handy Shell. However, I can still access a handful of applications through here, and without having to press a hardware button. The right softkey takes me to the dialler, and the left one allows me to customize Handy Shell’s many options.
Looking at the screenshots side-by-side, it’s easy to see which one is more useful. Handy Shell provides more information, and it’s glanceable, which is an important factor for me. The default Active Standby screen simply has too much wasted space, both empty and space used by useless features. If you have a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, I would highly recommend you check out Handy Shell. There’s a free 14-day trial, during which the application is fully functional, or you can go ahead and purchase it straight out from the Symbian-Guru Store.
On most phones, Handy Shell is merely another option that I don’t particularly care for. However, on the 5800 XpressMusic, it’s now a necessity. Touch changes things, that’s for sure. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing some thoughts on the Contacts bar that was so highly talked about at the 5800 XpressMusic announcement.
