James E. Lee's Blog

Thanks to Engadget for the image

This is mainly for myself to have as a record, but I think it's worth sharing.  These work for me; they may not work for others - use at your own risk.

Tips & Tricks

• Quick Contacts lookup - Just start typing (T9 style) from the home screen, and the phone will search Contacts & Call History for matching entry.

• Press the nav key ("Action button") to either side to cycle between contact methods - You can store someone's Mobile, Home, Pager, Email, etc. all in a single Contact record, and this method lets you easily choose one to use.  When you find the one you want to use, press Talk (easiest) or press the nav key "in".
  

• Manual keylock - Hold End button for a few seconds

• Auto keylock - Go to Start - Settings - Security - Enable Phone Lock, Set timeout for 1 min (or whatever you prefer), make password a single character

• Speed dial (1-99) is powerful - Great for speed dial of course, but you can also assign speed dial to other functions; quick launch of apps and quick SMS compose to <recipient>.  Since it's hard to remember arbitrary assignments, I use a mnemonic method; "FM" for File Manager, "BT" for Bluetooth Toggle, etc.
  

• Silence ringer on incoming call - Sometimes, you want only to silence the phone on an incoming call, but not "Reject" the call, which sends it immediately to voice mail.  To do this, press one of the volume keys.
  

• To get your IMEI # - Dial *#06#

• Quick access to Voice Memo Recorder - Press and hold the "Up" volume key

Software & services

• Bluetooth Toggle - Free utility to quickly turn bluetooth on/off.  I mapped this to speed dial 28 (for "BT") so I have an easy mnemonic for it.
  

• Contacts Menu - Allows sending of Contacts via email & SMS

• Google Local for Mobile - Great downloadable mapping and local search application for mobile phones.  It "animates" the following of your route when providing directions, so it's almost like having a GPS-enabled map, except you have to keep track of where you are, since it doesn't know.  I really think this is a good example of a smartphone "killer app".

• Gmail Mobile - You can use the phone's number pad to perform various actions (Inbox, Compose, Archive, etc.), and according to a post on smartphonethoughts.com, you can even "reply by call to people whose phone numbers are in your Gmail Contacts list".
  

• Bloglines Mobile - It's really nice to be able to access my feed reader via my mobile phone.   Bloglines lets you choose whether or not a feed is displayed when you connect via a mobile.

• Bluetunes: Listen to (media player) audio on a Bluetooth headset - The phone comes with a dual-earbud headset that doubles as stereo headphones, but I already carry my Bluetooth headset, and don't want to have to also carry those.  Besides, this is one of those things that just seems like it should be possible, and fortunately, it is!  To make this work, follow these steps:
  1. Enable Bluetooth on the phone (assigning a speeddial to Bluetooth Toggle, mentioned above, makes this quick & easy)
     
  2. Start Media Player
  3. Run Bluetunes
  4. Start playing audio file
  5. Press headset talk/end button
  
  I wasn't doing step #5 at first, and it didn't work until I did.
  
  
• NOTE: Read the warning/caveat on developer's site before using.  
  
• Credit: A  SmartphoneThoughts.com forum post.  This is a great capability; I appreciate the poster sharing the info, and the developer for creating it - thanks!