As if being able to charge up your smartphone without plugging it in was not brilliant enough, Nokia is taking the experience one step further.
What if your lovely Nokia Lumia 920 or Lumia 820 was showing you useful information while it was being wirelessly charged?
This is what the Weather & Calendar feature of the new Nokia Accessory application will do.
Weather & Calendar
When you are charging your Lumia 920 or Lumia 820 on the Nokia DT-910 wireless charging stand, you can tap NFC base of the charging stand to activate the Weather & Calendar screensaver.
This will show you the clock, your upcoming calendar appointment for today and tomorrow and the local weather provided you have a data connection and have enabled location services.
Naturally, it will also show you the charging level of your phone’s battery. In fact, an initial animation of the battery icon will be the first thing you see before it fades away to reveal the screensaver.
When you remove the smartphone from the stand, you’ll be shown the animation again and the current charge level.
Weather & Calendar is a clever feature that really takes advantage of the wireless charging stand’s gorgeous design. The stand is angled and shows your phone’s display prominently anyway so why just have a blank screen while it is being charged?
This way you can easily glance at useful information on your phone while you are working at your desk or reading a newspaper while the Lumia boosts its power reserves.
If you charge your phone in the bedroom at night it is also simple to dim the screen to a comfortable level by flicking the screen up or down.
Customisation and options
When the screensaver is on, touch anywhere on the screen to bring up the menu icon to edit the settings of the Nokia Accessory application.
The first thing you can change is the most radical – you can change the NFC tap to open a completely different application that you’ve downloaded from the Windows Phone Store!
For example, in the interests of fairness, there are plenty of other screensaver apps available!
In addition to changing the application that is opened by the tap, you can choose to open a different app in each of the wireless charging stands you may have.
Each wireless charging stand has each its own unique NFC tag, so you could have a stand in your bedroom that will tap to open the Weather & Calendar screensaver, while the stand at your desk can tap to open an app to let you monitor your stock prices or the latest football results!
Other customisation options include the ability to switch between your current weather location or entering it manually and having the temperature shown in Celsius or Fahrenheit.
Availability
The Weather & Calendar screensaver app is available through the latest Accessories update for Nokia Lumia 820 and Nokia Lumia 920 (apart from those devices on Verizon). You need a Nokia DT-910 wireless charging stand to use it though!
Handsets bought in 2013 will have Weather & Calendar on the Nokia Accessory app enabled straight out of the box.