I was thinking for a while about what other widgets /e/ could include. I mean widgets that are somewhat exclusive and at the same time useful to the /e/'s target group. Finally I came up with 2 ideas that I’d like to share with you. As always constructive criticism, additional ideas and other kind of feedback is very welcome:
1 - Highlighting important settings
What I realised with some elder Android users: by mistake, they press somewhere on the screen and this has an impact on the divices functionality.
- Example: such as volume settings (they are actually four different volume controls, whereas by pressing the volume buttons you can easily see one of them).
- Another example: There is a lot of information provided in the phones’ status bar, but I observed that people do not understand all the little icons that are popping up there, so they simply ignore them and wonder for instance that the phone is not ringing and vibrating anymore (solution would be to simply switch off the the do-not-disturb mode).
With those and similar observations I am proposing a widget that highlights and creates more visibility for settings that are important for a device’s correct functioning. On this widget you should be able to see all volume control settings, see if the phone is set into do-not-disturb / airplane mode, if GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth and DSL/data are on or off. Moreover the widget should state clearly in a short sentence what the impact of each current setting is: “The airplane mode is switched-on now, therefore the phone is currently usable only offline, all connections to the outside are cut, you cannot make phone calls, send emails and other messages nor receive any. Click on the icon to switch-off the Airplane mode.”
With a click on the respective icon the respective mode should be switched on/off.
To b clear: I am very aware that all the information this widget provides is already provided by /e/ (and any Android), but I am conviced several users do not understand them. This widget should summmarize important settings in a more clear way.
2 - "Under the hood"
My working title is maybe not entirely self-explaining: But the intention would be to have a widget that is making more system information easily available for advanced and interested users. For instance
- State of the phones’ battery (including current battery temperature, current voltage and approx. battery duration).
- Highlighting apps if their battery consumption short term/or over the last 12/24h is especially high,
- Indication of the data usage (last month/last 24h) (feature already proposed in a different context: https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/management/issues/253)
- Indication of the data usage (last month/last 24h)
- (…)
Ideally information provided by the widget should be adaptable (being switched on/off by the user)
As basis for such a widget could serve BatteryBot Pro (a FOSS app that can be found in /e/'s AppsStore).
Please feedback.
In your opinion, would that be useful ?