When the device is locked, the pressing any of the hardware keys does not generate an interrupt, so I do not think it is possible without quite a lot of changes.
I imagined there'd be some good reason why it hadn't happen yet, but it is still disheartening to hear that.
How about creating an alternative "lock screen"? I know it is possible to change the behaviour of the lock keys, could they be used to trigger some other lock-type state which we could have more control over? Or would that just end up being the same amount of work?
This is not when the screen is locked, but actually when you press power while screen is locked, and there is the "slide to unlock" screen. At this time all keys are active.
Well, isn't that kind of the plan, only allow device to come alive by slide (can't be sat on) and power button (hard to push in unintentionally)? Having volume and camera buttons work while locked could mean never-sleep-in-pocket N900.
Volume keys are equally hard to push. And if the N900 is playing music then it's not really asleep. Most music phones/mp3 players work just like that, they allow you to use the hardware keys to change volume/skip tracks/etc even if the device is locked. Since it doesn't sound that much of a technical difficulty, you would expect the N900 to be capable of that.
But I guess "power button -> what actually matters" isn't that bad. Here's hoping 1.2 comes soon.
