Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

Hi all.

I only use BT for my keyboard and gps when needed and so like to leave it turned off to preserve battery normally.

But turning it on is such a pain as you need to drill down through the control panel each time you want it back on again.

Is there a way (or has anyone already got) to add an icon or shortcut to the menu which would turn BT on?

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

In the 770, the BT icon was persistent, but Nokia in all their wisdom (not!) decided that was too convenient for the users of its tablets, so they made the icon disappear when not used. Until this day, they haven't found it necessary to listen to the complaints about that "feature", so: no.

I have a control panel icon in my Simple Launcher strip, which makes the procedure marginally less irritating.

You know what gets me most? The Bluetooth applet for the 770 was written by community members and it worked perfectly as it was. And yet Nokia thought they had to change it. Like just about any community software for the tablets that Nokia thought they could "improve", they f*cked it up.

Dumbass corporates...

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

As I am currently only using Bluetooth for listening to audio selections on Kagu using Bluetooth A2DP-enabled headphones, the Kagu application itself contains a Bluetooth icon switch.

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

+1
I was lamenting this just today myself (less than 2 weeks into using my N800). Seems they should have just left the icon in the panel but put a slash thru it or something when it is off. The WiFi icon is persistent... so why not Bluetooth?

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

The only rationale I've seen was that "it took up too much space"... which I don't buy. If too many icons are added to the top bar, you get a nice little arrow that leads you to the hidden ones. So why can't the user have control over that? I'm mystified.

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

as kagu and maemo mapper clearly show it is possible then mayeb someone clever could knock up a script or something that could be run from a menu icon or simple launcher?

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

... which spotlights the asininity of Nokia's "designers" even more.

They had an example of how it had to be done (the 770 BT hack), there were no copyright issues to hide themselves behind, there was no mentionable work to be done (other than the work they gave themselves by incompatibilising the early IT software) and now we're at the point where every developer has to reinvent the wheel.

Woo -- f*cking -- hoo.

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

Yep. And the second thing is.. there's _lots_ of space.. but it can't be utilized, because that bar is fixed-size and can't be adjusted in the applet control. There's room for 2 more icons to the right, but now it's just a black space. To the left there's a huge gray bar which says just 'Home', it can't be shrinked and the status bar can't be stretched to the left. It could _easily_ have room for 7-8 more icons if the UI designers had used some common sense.

You can see the design (or rather, implementation) problem elsewhere too, in the Nokia-provided applets: For most of them you can't shrink them as much as you like. The internet radio, the FM radio, you can't adjust them properly. Unlike good 3party applets like simple-launcher and many others, where you have full freedom to shrink and stretch as you wish. For OS2007, at least, this is critical, because applets are not allowed to overlap.

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

If you'd like to voice this concern to the developers, you could vote for bug 971. However, it's rather unclear how much help that might be as the bug has been closed with "WONTFIX".

Wait! Wait! There is a glimmer of hope, as in closing the bug Antti Peltomaa commented:

We are going to change this design in future releases. Maybe not as a permanent
indicator, but let's see.

So, perhaps an improvement will come in a future OS release. Maybe.

Re: Bluetooth On/Off Icon or Menu Option
 

I may have been precipitous in posting this exception. While Kagu does have its own built-in Bluetooth icon switch, I have subsequently found -- both to my embarrassment and displeasure -- that it does not apparently work if Bluetooth has been turned off in the control panel. Sorry if I have mislead and/or inconvenienced anyone.

Karel: How do you get the Simple Launcher to pick it up. I can't figure out how to implement that. (I do have Simple Launcher, though, working for other applications.)