Saturday 14 April 2007

Shortcut icons for hidden applications in S60 devices

Some Nokia smartphones based on the Symbian/S60 platform come with a set of preinstalled applications dedicated to the acquisition and management of GPS data. In most of these devices, however, such applications are "hidden", that is they don't have an associated menu item. This is especially true for N-series devices like the N80, while Nokia's business-line phones (E-series) do include shortcut icons in their menu.

This is a well-known fact that has been discussed many times in the past months. The usual procedure for running one of the hidden applications involves using a task manager application to first find the right executable within the list of installed applications and then execute it. This is quite tedious if you need to do that often, so I've put together a tiny installable package that adds the missing shortcut icons to your phone's Tools menu, as you can see in the following picture taken from my N80 (sorry it is in Italian):

The icons added by this package are, in order:

  • Landmarks
    A database of geographic locations that is shared among applications;
  • Positioning methods
    System-wide configuration of positioning methods that are provided to applications;
  • Navigator
    A tool that displays GPS data such as latitude, longitude, altitude and speed; it also provides basic navigation features that may be useful for maritime or sports use.

Please note that not all phones have these three applications installed. For example, the N73 only has Landmarks, while the N93 doesn't have any of them. Only icons for those applications that can be found on your device will be added to the menu. I've succesfully tested the package on these phones:

  • Nokia 3250 (Landmarks only)
  • Nokia 5500 Sport
  • N73 (Landmarks only)
  • N80

Icon labels are localized in two languages: Italian and English.

You can download the file here, it's a self-signed SIS package: http://www.webalice.it/marco.jez/files/navlauncher.sis

Enjoy!

4 comments:

chenriks said...

I installed this on my 3250 and I got the Landmarks icon, but when I try to open the program nothing is happening?

Marco said...

@Christian: I'm afraid I don't own a 3250, so I can't test it extensively. The only test I did on the 3250 was through Nokia's Remote Device Access, and it worked fine. Can you report your phone's firmware version?

chenriks said...

Hi again, my 3250 firmware version is: V 04.14 11-10-06 RM-38

go4bust said...

Marco - you are the man !!!!! My Nokia N80 now has the extra applications - thank you !!! You saved my sanity and make me a happy man. I cannot thank you enough.

Wayne