Xperiancer

The leaked Growing Panel that we love so much… turns out it has a lot much more to it. As you can see in the screenshots below, the panel adjusts itself according to the time – The first screenshot is for Christmas with tree lights on the plants in the background and a slight layer of snow on the ground, the second one is for Easter (time to hunt down the eggs!), the third one is for Halloween, and the fourth one is… well all you beautiful people out there. :) The screenshots are courtesy of Sera_6969 at XDA Forums… unfortunately for me, when i switched my date to 12/31/2009 23:59:00 to see what it shows for New Year’s (which it does), a message box popped up saying that the Beta version of Windows Mobile 6.5 is to be expired on 7/7/2009, and that followed by a white screen with the text saying something like “This Beta version of Windows Mobile has expired…” And it closed down access to the phone – The start menu was displaying and all, but wouldn’t open. Tried soft-resetting twice...

It turns out that the Growing panel has more to it than what was initially believed of it. It is not just a cool animated panel, but has a lot more to offer. First of all let me start off by complementing the animating panel. Having run it for a couple of hours now, the first thing i noticed was that it kept changing with time. The sun went down and the moon came up, and slowly made across the sky… and now the moon is almost out of sight and the sky a bit brightened, the sun should be showing up soon. (unfortunately i won’t be able to catch the sun rising as i’ll be asleep by then…) Next are the small insects on the panel. Bees flying by, worms crawling on the plants, fireflies in the air, and snails on the ground. Hit the bee or the ladybird and the phone buzzes, hit a snail and it hides itself inside its shell and stays there – hit it again to get it moving again, hit the firefly and it flickers… This is definitely a panel worth having! Now… the functionality on the panel. As e...

Update – More Detail of the panel here . Included in the R3 ROM, and available as a CAB download – courtesy of itje at XDA forums – Xperia finally gets a Panel that is actually cool! Not much “Important stuff” is displayed on this dynamic flash based panel other than the current date and time. Visually appealing, the panel can be thought of as a screensaver on your desktop – growing plants, falling leaves, bees and snails… It is simply a panel that you can switch to when at a party or taking time off. To try it out, head on here (look in the second post). If possible, send itje a donation to appreciate his hard work! (FYI – You will need to install an ActiveX Plugin for the panel to work) Some screenshots below…