The Nokia N97: All About the Widget based Homescreen

One of the Nokia N97‘s much touted features, is the new Widget-ised Homescreen arrangement thats present on the S60 V5 Device.

We take a closer look at the new Homescreen and its Widgets. Read on to know more !

Homescreens can be the most crucial part of a “SmartPhone” nowadays. In a perfect world, I’d like to look down at my phone’s Homescreen and be updated on every bit of news that I’d need to be. What are my friends saying on Facebook ? Do I have any new email ? Missed calls or Text Messages ? What Time & Date is it ?

At the same time, your homescreen needs to also provide you with easy ways to access important apps on your device, or favourite contacts. You also need an easy way to access and use all the data being shown to you.

What Nokia has done is, try to cover all the aforementioned content, in its new Widget based Homescreen on the N97. And still allow you to swipe away all that, to be able to view your Wallpaper.

Previously on Nokia’s other S60 v5 device, the Nokia 5800, the homescreen wasnt as rich in information. You had to choose between:

- The basic Homescreen (with no widgets, contact bar or shortcuts to apps)

(Notice the different between the 5800 screen and the Nokia N97 basic screen)

- The Shortcut Bar (shortcuts to apps and plugins, but no access to contacts)

- And lastly, the Contacts Bar (only access to four of your favourite contacts, no access to apps or plugins)

On the Nokia 5800, you were limited to having to choose between one of these modes, without being able to customise the Homescreen exactly to your liking. You werent able to choose which apps AND contacts you want displayed on the homescreen at the same time. No way to get any information outside of these three modes either.

Luckily Nokia realised that, and implemented the new Homescreen mode on the Nokia N97. Definitely an improvement over the 5800′s Homescreen modes.

As you can see, you can customise the Homescreen with Widgets, to deliver information relevant to YOU. And if you’re feeling a bit bored of all that stuff going on, on your homescreen, you can just swipe across the screen to clear them all. That way you get to see your cool wallpaper.

Of course, you can swipe the screen again, to get all your widgets back. This is one of the smartest things Nokia have done in my opinion. I know quite a few people who have wallpapers of their kids or loved ones on their devices, and usually turn off any homescreen modes so that they can see the wallpaper properly. This should satisfy them, eh ?

Coming back to topic, the N97′s homescreen still has the hidden shortcuts that we first saw on the 5800′s Homescreen.

If you tap the upper right of the homescreen (right next to the battery indicator area), for example, you get access to the time and connection options.

Tapping on that brings up the list of connection methods for the device.

This is basically quick access to your Bluetooth, Wifi, USB, Network settings, etc.

Tapping on the Clock on the upper Left side, brings up your clock and alarm settings.

There’s also a nifty little world clock included.

Tapping on the Date, brings up the Calendar app.

And tapping on the Profile Name (in this case “General”), brings up your sound profiles.

Near the lower part of the screen, at the Center, is the shortcut to the Numeric Keypad.

As expected, this brings up the Numeric Keypad for dialing, saving numbers etc.

On the left side of the Homescreen, is the “Options” menu which cant be changed. Using the “Options” you can customise what shortcut you want on the Right-lower side of the screen (in our case its “Contacts”). We’ll talk about how to do this later in the post.

Coming back to the Homescreen, Widgets play a very important role. Using the pre-installed widgets or by downloading more from the Ovi Store, you can truly personalise your Homescreen to give you the kind of information that you want. You have 5 customisable slots to “insert” widgets into.

For example, on my Homescreen, I have my Favourite Contacts taking slot #1. I have my Favourite Apps and my calendar entries on #2 and #3 respectively. Then I have easy access to my Music player on slot #4, and the weather on slot #5 thanks to the Accuweather Widget.

Its worth noting that Widget “colors” and transparency, depends on the Phone Theme used. There’s the same Homescreen with another Pre-installed Phone Theme on the N97.

Usually if you have a Widget that needs to communicate with the Internet to pull in Data, it’ll ask you on startup, if it can connect using an Access Point.

If you choose yes, all homescreen widgets check for updates to their content. Some Widgets will only give you a brief summary of news or updates which you’ll have to click through, to get to the full content. For example, the Accuweather widget usually sits in the homescreen and updates silently (if you set Homescreen Widgets to Online). But if you tap the widget, you’re taken to a full interactive page of weather updates.

Likewise for the Facebook Widget, and almost any other “Internet” widget.

Of course if you’re worried about battery life, or on a limited data plan and dont want your Homescreen Widgets using your Data, you can simply go to “Options” on the Homescreen and select “Content to Offline Mode”.

If you go to “Options” and then select “Edit Content”, this is where all the fun begins. The N97 Homescreen goes into “Editing Mode”, where all the Widgets appear translucent (atleast more than usual) and are movable between the 5 slots.

While in this mode, you can drag and drop Widgets around, into whichever slot you prefer.

And of course, you can do this in portrait or Landscape mode.

Of if you want, just remove the Widget from the slot and put a new one there instead.

Removing a Widget is as easy as tapping it and selecting “Remove” from the menu that pops up. If a Widget has specific settings for itself, a “settings” option pops up here too. You can also change your wallpaper on the menu that pops up. One you do this, the slot becomes empty until you add another Widget into it.

To add a Widget to an empty slot, just tap on it and select “Add Content”. This will bring up a list of available widgets that are installed on your device.

If there arnt enough widgets for you, you can download more from the Ovi App Store by selecting “Download Content”. But without a dedicated “Widgets” section, searching for apps with Homescreen-compatible widgets is a pretty hard operation.

Once you’ve added your widget, you can still rearrange it to whichever slot you’d want it on, etc. Here I’ve added the Email Widget, ZCJ Rss Feed and Facebook Widget. You can add any RSS feed that you’ve subscribed to using the device browser.

Also, if you want to edit or change what your right selection key shortcut is, you can go to Options–>Right Selection Key and select a shortcut.

You can select an Application or a Bookmark.

In our case we selected the Contacts App.

Once you’ve finished editing your homescreen, tap “Done” and thats it. If you have any “online” widgets, let them connect and update their content.

And of course, the Widgets align themselves the same, when in Landscape mode too.

There are a couple niggles though. For example, the Contacts Widget lists your first 4 favourite contacts in your contacts application. There is no way to edit and choose which contacts appears 1st,2nd, etc on the “widget”.

Its all based on the first four people you add to your “favourites” in the contacts application. Bit of a step back, seeing how the 5800 “contacts bar” let you choose. You might have also noticed that the N97 lists your favourite contacts at the start of your contacts list, which is definitely helpful.

Of course, in the beginning when you dont have any “favourite” contacts yet, the widget does let you choose. Once you do have favourite contacts in your contacts list, the top 4 is listed here whether you like it or not, though.

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So that’s it. All about the new Widget Based Homescreen on the Nokia N97. As you can see its definitely an improvement over previous S60 iterations, atleast in my opinion.

Of course there are a couple niggles, like it being hard to find and download new Widgets from the Ovi Store. And sometimes I feel like having just 5 slots on that homescreen isnt enough. I wish the N97 has the “Homescreen Mode Switch” feature of Eseries devices, cause I could definitely see myself using it here.

That being said, no actual complaints. I’d say Nokia has actually got the Homescreen right, albeit there’s always room for improvement.

You’ve read the review. What do you think ?