Notices

Got inspired by an app on a blackberry. Wish to have something like that on my N900:

Having a quickly accessible key combo or finger gesture for setting the phone in a mode, that doesn't show anything on the desktop except the background picture. In this mode the phone should not allow anything except dialing, starting and finishing a phone call. Repeating the key combo or finger gesture should return the phone to standard mode and enable again all widgets.

It would also be nice to have that option during a phone conversation.

Use example #1: I want to borrow my phone to somebody (business partner), so he can make a quick call. No need that he can see my latest incoming messages, my calendar or my at this moment running apps.

Use example #2: Having a phone call and then letting a friend talk to the person on the phone. The person may not be used to touch screen and see personal information or start tasks, that will cause unnecessary complications

Use example #3: Showing the desktop background picture to somebody. Without having all those thumb nails and widgets covering the background.

In a phone like the N900 use case #3 is not typical but use case #1 and #2 made me wish several times already to have that kind of app.

Can it be done? Is anybody on it already?

Interesting. Theoretically it seems possible.
Linux normally has 2 users: root and a user, on Maemo you're named user.
If you made a second user, f. ex. guest, that user would not have access to the files on user, because if the user user has a password or is an account with a higher priority, the guest cant access it.
So, theoretically, yes, if you can enable the user-system, or if you can implement an ARM-based user-system.
Note: This is only theory.

Well Linux allows more than two users, but that's another issue. You wouldn't be using another user to do this, but simply putting the desktop into a mode where all functions apart from phone calls are disabled.

I think the most workable solution is in fact to have a mode for the phone app itself wherein the touch controls to close the app or return to the desktop aren't visible, and can only be shown again with a code.
I'm not sure that it would be so easy to create something that allowed you to do example #3, though of course you could always just show the background image via the image viewer.

Using a user guest and then switching the user with a double click of the power button may be interesting. That way personal files and applications could be hidden and when MAEMO (or Meego) will allow that, there could be different desktops for the users. It's like switching gnome sessions. Question is, if maemo does offer that kind of user.


That would indeed be a very useful solution already! What we would need is kind of a crossover between the K9 Calll widget, the power button daemon and some extra programming, to make sure, that after the phone call the desktop will not appear.


Indeed. That is the least useful of the three use cases I provided, yet that is the functionality of the Blackberry App, that caught my eye.