Feature Pack 1 of the S60 operating system provides only a thumbnail picture for each contact, which is displayed when a call comes in. However, this icon is so small that you need a magnifying glass just to see who it is. For that reason many Full Screen Picture ID applications have sprung up for the S60 platform. Feature Pack 2 however did add a fullscreen feature, but it isn't nearly as flexible as the one provided in ContactsEx. ContactsEx is the perfect place to provide such functionality, because it already deals directly with contact data. Unlike most of the other 3rd-party applications however, ContactsEx integrates the Picture ID feature into your day-to-day contact management chores and provides flexibility not found in other programs. See When a Call Comes in to see what your choices are when someone calls.

Keyboard Behavior (Outside of Image Editors)

The right softkey will always say Back when you aren't in one of the image editors. Pressing this key returns to the Name tab.

The up and down cursor keys do nothing outside of an Image Editor.

The left and right cursor keys are used to move to an adjacent tab. Right moves to the Groups tab, while left move to the Sundry tab.

The SELECT button activates the Cropping editor, in which you can select a smaller area of a larger image to use for your Picture ID. See Cropping (below) for full details.

Pressing the TALK key will dial the default phone number of the current contact. However, if the that contact doesn't have a phone number, but it does have an email address, then pressing TALK begins a new email message to the default email address. See the documentation on the #s and Emails tab for details on setting default numbers and addresses. Also see the section on Calling Cards for details on how numbers are dialed.

The END key sends the program to the background and returns the phone to the idle screen.

All other keys have no function in this tab while outside of the Image Editor.

Menu Functions

Assign From Contact: This option is available only if you have an FP2 phone, and only if you have previously assigned a full-sized image to the contact. Choosing this option allows you skip directly past the selection process outlined in the Assign option. Once the picture is loaded however, everything proceeds exactly as outlined below.

Assign: This option allow you to assign a new photograph to the contact from your phone's Image Gallery. When you choose this item a dialog will open that will allow you to search through all of the images on your phone. The dialog for doing this is provided in the operating system, but someone at Symbian made a huge error (which Symbian takes the blame for in a Knowledge Base article) that prevents self-signed programs from accessing this dialog. On phones where this access is denied, an error message will appear when you try to assign a picture.

All is not lost however. To allow users of phones with the faulty versions of the O/S to load images, I created my own dialog for searching and selecting images from the Gallery. My version doesn't include thumbnails of the pictures however, but it attempts to make up for this by adding other search features. See Alternate Picture Selector for details on using this alternate editor.

Also note that even if you have a phone with this restriction you can get around it by using Symbian Signed Online to sign the unsigned version of ContactsEx for your specific phone. See Installing and Running for details on signing a copy of the program. If you have a hacked phone that can install anything, just directly install the unsigned copy and you shouldn't have any trouble using the native selector.

Proceed from here for both Assign and Assign From Contact:

Once you've chosen the picture you want it will be loaded into the editor and then processed so that it doesn't have jagged edges when viewed in the size needed to display it.

The new image will be displayed with a thick blue border around it to tell you that this image hasn't yet been finalized (the program hasn't yet produced resized images that it stores in the file system). At this stage you have only 3 choices: you can press the Reject softkey to throw away the new selection; you can choose to crop the image (by pressing the SELECT button or by choosing the Crop sub-menu from the Options softkey); or you can accept the image and create the necessary resized images in the file system. Once that's done you are free to use all of the Image Editing features.

When loading landscape images into a portrait-oriented phone, or portrait images into a landscape-oriented phone, the initial images don't fill the screen. You can certainly accept them this way, but in actual use these images will be rotated to fit the screen, so if you accept a landscape image for example, it will always be displayed (when a call is in progress) in landscape orientation. Subsequently it is recommended that you crop the image if it does not fill the entire screen in your preferred orientation.

See Cropping for complete details on cropping an image.

Image: This is a top-level menu item containing various sub-menu items. Those items are as follows:

Name: This is a top-level menu item containing various sub-menu items. Those items are as follows:

Number/Label: This is a top-level menu item containing various sub-menu items. Those items are as follows:

Set For: This is a top-level menu item containing various sub-menu items. Those items are as follows:

Clear: This is a top-level menu item containing various sub-menu items. Those items are as follows:

Use Default Properties: This option changes ALL of the color, position, size, and font properties of this Picture ID to match those of the current default. In addition to changing the properties, it also ties them to the default settings so that if the default is ever changed, so will the text in the Picture ID of this contact. You break the tie to a default value by changing a property explicitly.

Preview Picture ID: This option displays the current contact's Picture ID in full screen, thus allowing you see exactly how it will look when a real call takes place. The Number/Label field will (for the sake of this preview) be filled with the default phone number for the contact. If the contact doesn't have any phone numbers, then either Number or Label will appear, as it does on the Picture tab normally.

Exit: This option terminates the program.

Cropping

Cropping is the process of selecting a portion of a larger image to use for your Picture ID. Cropping may be performed repeatedly in order to isolate the exact portion of the image you want. Cropping is always performed on the originally-chosen image, and so it is recommended that you use a high-resolution picture to begin with (such a photograph taken with your phone's camera at its highest supported resolution). Doing this ensures that you will get the best quality image possible for the area you crop.

When the cropping editor is first activated, which can be done from the menu, by pressing the SELECT button when no other editors are active, or when a picture is first loaded, a red rectangle appears on the screen. The proportions of this rectangle match the proportions of your screen in its present orientation.

You move the rectangle around by pressing the left, right, up, or down cursor keys. Pressing the key once moves the box by 1 pixel, but holding the key down causes it to move rapidly until the key is released. You can increase the size of the rectangle by pressing and holding the shift key (which on non-QWERTY devices is the key with the icon of a pencil on it, and on models without the pencil key it is the # key) while simultaneously pressing the cursor down key. You can decrease the size by pressing shift and cursor up key.

Once you've positioned and sized the rectangle to your liking, press the SELECT button to accept it, or press the Accept softkey. To cancel the Cropping editor without making any changes, press the Cancel softkey.

After a crop has been performed however, the images stored in the file system are out-of-date, and so a thick blue border appears around the image to remind you of this. At this time the right softkey changes to say Reject. Pressing it will revert to the image as seen before you began the cropping operation. The Options menu contains only 2 items at this time: Accept Changes and Crop. By accepting the changes you have made the images stored in the file system are updated. This may take a few seconds, and so a wait message will be displayed.

The three pictures below demonstrate a crop in action, followed by the creation of images on the file system:

Text Editor

This is an on-screen interface for changing the position, size, color, background, and anchor point for either the Name or Number/Label text on the image.

When the editor is first entered a cyan-colored box will be drawn around the text and 4 small yellow triangles will appear around it denoting that we are in Move Mode. Use the up, down, left, or right cursor keys to move the image 1 pixel at a time. Hold down the cursor key and the text will move rapidly in the chosen direction until you release the key.

To quickly move text to any four of the screen's extremes, hold the shift key while you press the up, down, left, or right cursor keys. Besides moving the text out to the edge of the screen, this will also change the horizontal or vertical alignment accordingly. To center the text horizontally, hold the shift key and press the SELECT button.

To change the editor mode, press the SELECT button once. The appearance of the text will now change markedly. The interior of the box will change to a transparent white color and text will appear in muted red beneath it. Drawn on top of the box will be a horizontal and a vertical line with a cyan-colored diamond at the point where these two lines intersect. This mode is used to change the anchor point.

An anchor point is where the box's position is calculated from. As the size of the displayed text changes, it always remained anchored to that exact point. Horizontally you can align to the left, the center, or the right. Not only will this determine where the text anchors to, it will also determine the text alignment when the text spans more than one line. A left anchor produces left-aligned text, a center anchor produces centered text, and a right anchor produces right-aligned text. Use the left cursor key to move the anchor to the left, or the down cursor key to move the anchor to the right.

Vertically you can align to the top, center, or bottom. This is critically important in situations where the text may contain differing numbers of lines depending upon its application. Use the up cursor key to move the anchor upwards, or the down cursor key to move it downwards.

To change the editor mode again, press SELECT once more. The text will now be surround by a broken box consisting of 4 corners In this mode you can change the font's size and color, as well as set a background if needed.

Use the up key to increase the font size and the down key to decrease the font size. Use the left and right keys to scroll through a selection of primary colors in 4 different brightness levels.

If your picture has lots of high-contrast elements in it and no choice of text color seems to work, you can put a fuzzy oval background behind the text to highlight it. To increase the intensity of this background, hold down the shift key and press cursor up. To reduce the intensity of the background, hold shift and press cursor down.

Initially the fuzzy oval background is white, but you can change it to any of the 7 other primary colors by holding the shift key and pressing the left or right cursor keys. You can turn off the background quickly by holding shift and pressing the clear key (backspace on QWERTY devices and the "C" key on non-QWERTY devices).

The examples below show you how the fuzzy backgrounds might look:

You may press the SELECT button continuously to cycle through the three editor modes. Once you're happy with the changes press the Done softkey. To thrown away all of the changes you have just made, press the Cancel softkey.

Once any single property of a piece of text is changed, that particular item looses its ties with the default values. The size, position, and color of the text becomes cast in stone, no matter what you do to the default settings. Name and Label items are treated as separate entities, so you can have one tied to the default, while the other is custom-altered. You can return return the text to the defaults at any time.

Color Filters

This feature is akin to a physical color filter that one can screw onto the lens of a camera. Like a such device, the feature provides filters in varying colors with varying degrees of transparency. While the primary purpose of the filter is to tint your pictures, the white and black filters also provide some useful functionality.

A white filter decreases the contrast in an image as you turn up the opacity. This can be useful for toning down images that have high contrast. A black filter essentially decreases the brightness of the image. You can use it to darken an overly-bright image.

To use the filter select the Color Filter option from the Image sub-menu. A thick red frame will be drawn around the picture to let you know the mode has been activated. Now use the up cursor key to increase the opacity of the filter, or the down cursor key to decrease it. Use the left and right cursor keys to select the color of the filter. You can quickly remove the filter by pressing the clear key.

Once you're finished, press the Done softkey to keep the changes you've made, or press the Cancel softkey to discard your changes.

When a Call Comes In

When a call comes in and the Picture ID is displayed on the screen you have a number of choices. You can press the SELECT button to clear the picture from the screen. You can press the TALK button to answer the phone normally. You can press the right softkey to answer the phone directly into speakerphone mode. You can press the END key to reject the call and send it to voicemail.

For S60 FP1 phones only running the unsigned copy of ContactsEx: If you've chosen to keep the picture on the screen during a call, you can toggle speakerphone mode by pressing the right softkey. This latter feature applies to both incoming and outgoing calls. Unlike the native S60 phone answering application you can activate the speakerphone before the other end picks up.