Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

Yes, it does.

Settings -> Phone -> Send my caller ID

• Yes
• No
• Let network choose

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

Being able to group contacts would be useful.

As for ring tones, have them set at 3 levels:

1. default (nothing set specifically)
2. At the group level (over rides default if set)
3. At the contact level (over rides group ring if set)

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

Here on Vodafone pay-as-you-go, voicemail minutes appear to cost the same as calls, that is 20p/minute...

I have a Three USIM ready with much better terms, the Vodafone PAYG is just a cheap thing to keep me going until I have an N900 to put the USIM into :-)

(Hope they fix the "not compatible with Three USIMs bug soon!)

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

As I said, it could be used to make single item selection with less clicks than removing multiple unneeded selections if that button is implemented the way I described.

Hmm. What about taking 2 different approaches to logs as simple "call log" and advanced "global log"?

Simple call log should use single selection at a time (radiobox logic) to eliminate the need for confirmation of multiple selections by either pressing another button or touching unused areas of the screen.

(●) Show All
(..) Filter Incoming
(..) Filter Outgoing
(..) Filter Missed
(..) Filter Voicemail

Advanced global log should use multiple selection at a time (checkbox logic) since data will be aggregated from lots of sources (as in S60 now) user should be able to perform advanced & custom filtering (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33486: similar topic)

(..) Show All
(●) Filter
Criteria:
....[..] Voice Calls
....[..] VoIP Calls
....[X] SMS
....[..] IM
....[..] Voice Mail
....[..] E-mail
....[..] Data connections
....[..] WiFi
Direction:
....[..] All
....[X] Incoming
....[..] Outgoing
....[..] Missed
....[X] Number/Contact/Contact Group

Show all could save state of selected checkboxes, but I prefer this should be optional (since I think I'd like to make new selections everytime I want to go advanced)

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

I'm locked into Orange on a contract for a while (still paying for the mistake that was the c905). My voicemail can't be turned off, and the calls come out of my allowance. As I never get anywhere near using my allowance at the moment (calls are a low priority for me, and the c905 is 'broken' in that respect anyay) that means free. I have dug through and found the voicemail number, and added it to contacts for syncing. Now I need to know whether n900 notifies of a message left - which I probably shan't know for sure till I hold the device in my sticky paws.

Not that it matters much to me but I gather n900 doesn't have speed dial? or voicedial? Both of those might fit into thei category of improvements.

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

you mean a notification for a voice message in your carrier's voicebox? the n900 knows nothing about that, so it can't inform you. the carrier has to send you a sms that you have messages waiting. (at least that's the way it works with all the carriers i know, perhaps it's different in the uk)

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

My carrier sends some sort of signal: a symbol appears on the phone as long as I have unread messages. As soon as I read and delete them, the little envelope symbol disappears: works in symbian,palm and SE OS to my certain knowledge.

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

@ Kathy, yes it is clear different ISPs in different countries use different methods. According to Wikipedia voicemail:

However many people do have to pay for using voicemail (PAYG or having free minutes in subscription or not). Having the stuff local allows for much more versatile configuration, and allows even to centralize VoIP (e.g. Skype)/SIP voicemail to be combined with GSM voicemail.

When I had an answering machine on my home line I never had to dial some special number to hear my voicemails. They were recorded local. It really makes little sense to save them remotely, and _if_ saved remotely it makes sense to fetch them from the server and then decide what to do with them. Imagine your mail server asking you if you really want to download the spam or delete it then telling you how many messages remaining meanwhile you're paying for the seconds to listen to this artificial nonsense wasting your time; that is voicemail on GSM. Although perhaps deserves a seperate topic (Brainstorm) to fix the issue has been discussed before on t.m.o.

Thanks for your post, I think you're on the right way for getting the UI right.

However IMO one engine should be used (Tracker) with a backend for the protocols (SMS, VoIP, GSM, ...). With flags a shortcut can be made. Like for example: tracker --search backend=gsm filter=none. From there, one can modify the filter or use more backends. My point is: why use different search program or different UI when using different protocol (VoIP or IM different than GSM or SMS)?

Instead, make it unified, like the profiles don't care about protocol you use to communicate with either; they store them all. Then the 'gsm communication log' should use the frameworks as the 'general communication log'. If yes, why not simply use the same interface with default options which make sense from the protocol used (e.g. log called from GSM goes by default for GSM but allows more)?

One problem is 'Missing' has different context in IM/SMS/e-mail than in VoIP/SIP/GSM, and I'm not sure how to solve this because there is no authentication in IM/SMS the other side has read the message.

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

Very convergent approach, thanks :)

Now I understand that if we had a permanent DIAL/SEND key on the screen (or a HW key like in most phones) which could directly be assigned to "fast" log (only voice calls are shown like in most phones) separate UIs would be consistent, but since we don't have such a key versus we shouldn't have two seperate UIs for one job. That's alright. I have a few more ideas:

[ Calls ] [ Filter ] [ Sort ]

Three keys in a tab, just above listed events.

• Calls (or whatever it can be called): remove any previous filters and apply "voice" only. Permanent action. Could display "Return" while other filters are applied since this will be default behaviour of call list.
• Filter: speaks for itself.
• Sort: speaks for itself.

Items in filtering menu applying fixed (maybe configurable via editing a file?) and reasonable presets of filters should be solution to this problem. My "reasonable" preset list would be:

• Incoming: Incoming (Voice Calls + VoIP Calls + Video calls + SMS + MMS + IM + Voice Mail + E-mail)
• Outgoing: Outgoing (Voice Calls + VoIP Calls + Video calls + SMS + MMS + IM + Voice Mail + E-mail + EDGE/3G + WiFi)
• Missed: Missed (Voice Calls + VoIP Calls + Video calls + Voice Mail)
• Text: All (SMS + MMS + IM + E-mail)
• Data: All (EDGE/3G + WiFi)
• People: All (Voice Calls + VoIP Calls + Video calls + SMS + MMS + IM + Voice Mail + E-mail) for selected/highlighted number/contact/group
• Advanced: Open a dialog and let user select prefered filters and directions.

In fact, I don't have any real idea how current list behaves. Sorry if I have duplicate/inappropriate ideas.

Re: [Idea sandbox] Improving the Maemo 5 phone experience
 

There's been some EXCEPTIONALLY productive discussion on this and I am getting ready to corral it into Solutions unless someone beats me to it.

Thanks all!