Hi all....
I am planning to purchase a touch pro 2 in the next couple of days... however there is something I need to find out... does the device come with a on screen 'normal' phone keypad[1-9] which allows you to input T9(XT9) sms like what they have on the touch diamond 2/touch HD?.... I have checked a couple of reviews and the answer that I got was sadly to say yes and no...
can anyone please help with this...
thanks for eveyone's help....
yes there is phone keypad option. default is qwerty keyboard but you can change to phone keypad.
The phone interface doesn't have a T9 like phone keypad.
But, as powersquad says, the messaging interface does.
And you can turn T9 on and off.
Notice you'll change the default: When you change the keyboard to the phone keypad, it will also be the default for email, Word, etc.
But then you'll use the hardware keyboard, don't you
And if it isn't standard you can download a million different types of keyboards ...
I know there is probably an app for that.
But I mean speed dial. I want to open the phone app (which, in my scenario, defaults to the keypad), and long-press a number to quick-dial someone.
My boss can go from "we need to call x", to actually dialing on his blackberry in about 1.5 seconds.
I have to unlock, wait for the screen to actually respond (since it freezes for that half second after unlocking), hit the people tile, hit the "work" group, find the contact, tap it. Then tap "call".
I could pin that group to the main page, yes. But that's beside the point.
My old windows mobile device had 99 spots for speed dial numbers. Please Microsoft. Just let us speed dial.
--edit--
While I'm on this, there should be a more business-friendly setup available. In my "work" group, I don't care "what's new" or what pictures they've uploaded to facebook.
You can also voice command "call xxx" via lock screen (if enabled) or even bluetooth without touching the phone (on windows phone).
I used a blackberry for years, and as phones they are amazing. I have yet to see any touchscreen phone than is as quick for things such as calling (without voice) as a BB. Its very efficient at that. Dedicated call/end buttons are always nice as well.
But yes, we do need smart dialing. Vote for it here:
http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/f...s/suggestions/2281390-smart-dailing?ref=title
There are indeed plenty of apps for that
Which application can be natively put into the default phone dialer to speed dial with long press the number?
angler said:
Which application can be natively put into the default phone dialer to speed dial with long press the number?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not possible as of yet.
The best dialer I've found on the Marketplace so far is 7Dialer. It doesn't quite have a speed dial function, but you can pin contacts to the dialer, making calls and texts just a swipe and a tap away. Very quick. And it looks very nice (conforms to Metro and the native dialer). Also has the smart dial/search functionality so you can hit some numbers to narrow people for fast searching.
But why is MS overlooking what would seem to be such a basic feature as speed dialing? Old home phones from the 90s can do this.
Admitted I do not use speed dialing but I am sure some other people do.
nicksti said:
But why is MS overlooking what would seem to be such a basic feature as speed dialing? Old home phones from the 90s can do this.
Admitted I do not use speed dialing but I am sure some other people do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Microsoft has not overlooked Speed Dialing, Windows Phone simply does it in a different way using a pinned tile. Pin a live tile, tap it and tap a number. It serves the same purpose and it follows Microsoft people-first/Metro UI methodology.
Everyone is so used to things working one way, that they can't get used to or are unwilling to get used to doing things a different way. All part of Microsoft's uphill battle. Using new design paradigms and being different requires people to change, and sometimes people just don't want to, which is totally understandable. The way things work on Windows Phone may not be for everyone, but there are advantages if you take the time to learn and use the functions of the phone the way they were intended.
This is not just a Microsoft thing, this is just the way that things work when you introduce change.
Yeah, pinning the contact is the metro style speed dial.
Another thing I see people constantly complaining about is not having a smart dialer with the keypad, but I just type out the name in the "call log" and it pops up, same concept, and if it isn't there, you hit "search contacts, and bam...
I honestly rarely used speed dial, so I may be biased here. I tried to a few times, hated it, I like this way more.
prjkthack said:
Microsoft has not overlooked Speed Dialing, Windows Phone simply does it in a different way using a pinned tile. Pin a live tile, tap it and tap a number. It serves the same purpose and it follows Microsoft people-first/Metro UI methodology.
Everyone is so used to things working one way, that they can't get used to or are unwilling to get used to doing things a different way. All part of Microsoft's uphill battle. Using new design paradigms and being different requires people to change, and sometimes people just don't want to, which is totally understandable. The way things work on Windows Phone may not be for everyone, but there are advantages if you take the time to learn and use the functions of the phone the way they were intended.
This is not just a Microsoft thing, this is just the way that things work when you introduce change.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem, though, is that the "metro way" is no more efficient than an "old-fashioned" speed dialer. Plus, it further crowds and already overcrowded start screen. If someone were to follow every suggestion in this forum for how to just pin a live tile every time they wanted to do something, they would soon have hundreds of tiles cluttering the start screen.
It seems to me that Microsoft is trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. Change for its own sake doesn't necessarily make things better.
TIP - Pin a User Group for quick access.
FiyaFleye said:
Yeah, pinning the contact is the metro style speed dial.
Another thing I see people constantly complaining about is not having a smart dialer with the keypad, but I just type out the name in the "call log" and it pops up, same concept, and if it isn't there, you hit "search contacts, and bam...
I honestly rarely used speed dial, so I may be biased here. I tried to a few times, hated it, I like this way more.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Creating a group and pinning it is probably a better option though. Once the group is pinned, you tap the group, and see just those in the group. Then tap the contact from the group. Then select the number.
That way you don't need to add a tile for every speed dial contact.
It's 1 more tap than the old speed dial. Press phone. Press number. Press talk. Or was it press and hold number. Or was it press first digit and press and hold next digit. I think depending on the phone, it was all of these in the past.
This. Tap group. Tap Contact. Tap communication method.
With speed dial you needed to memorize what number you saved them under. This lets you know with out memorizing a number who you are going to call and how.
I wouldn't be surprised if they add smart dialing in the future. Maybe with Apollo. It is one of those efficient, productivity issues that should be a given with any smartphone imo.
I shall be surprised Microsoft will implement press and hold number digit to speed dial a phone number for WP. Microsoft think in a different way to dial most-used phone number in such a way to pin that contact as the live tile. There is no application around currently work as previous smart phone saying Anna or Belle. Apple also did not implement such kind of speed dial but a favourite in a tab of the iphone native phone dialer. I am used to the press and hold number speed dial despite I have to memorize which phone contact is set of which number digit.
RoboDad said:
The problem, though, is that the "metro way" is no more efficient than an "old-fashioned" speed dialer. Plus, it further crowds and already overcrowded start screen. If someone were to follow every suggestion in this forum for how to just pin a live tile every time they wanted to do something, they would soon have hundreds of tiles cluttering the start screen.
It seems to me that Microsoft is trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. Change for its own sake doesn't necessarily make things better.
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Click to collapse
Most of the time, its purely personal preference. And very rarely these days do I see people using "old fashioned speed dial" as it used to be pre-smartphone. Our smartphones are much smarter than having to hold down a single physical button to call someone (and thus, more complicated).
You throw the same concept onto a smartphone and you don't get the same result. You press the power button, swipe/pinch/tap/slide/triple-tap/whatever/dance/smile/sing/talk to make the lockscreen go away, tap the phone/dialer application, bring up the dial pad if its not automatically displayed, and THEN finally hold down a single digital digit to make it dial someone. This is not speed dial. The problem doesn't exist because speed dial the way we know it does not exist on a smartphone. You've got some shortcuts and apps and methods to make dialing easier, but there is no real speed dial on a smartphone.
Every phone has a different way of doing it, if it even has such functionality to begin with.
I didn't say that the "metro way" was more or less efficient than any other speed dial method on a smartphone, but it does follow Microsoft's whole people-first/social methodology instead of trying to emulate the function of a hardware button that simply does not work the same way on a smartphone. Microsoft didn't just copy everyone and throw the speed dial thing in there for the sake of it. Neither was the change/push to make your favorite things a pinned live tile(s) a change for its own sake. It has a purpose, and as a people-centric/social platform, that purpose is to bring your phone to life. Your contact is more than just a number you hold down and press. And yes, everyone may not like it, but to really appreciate this platform is to understand why Microsoft made certain things work the way they do and why Microsoft said hey, "If we really want people to buy into this whole live tile thing, we've gotta push it hard and show people that there are different ways to send and get information, and yes, even a different way of making a phone call." That they probably left a lot of old, tired and standard ideas on the chopping block because they believe in their platform and in how they designed their software, and that just adding speed dial to make that small percentage of people who still use it happy shows neither faith in what they originally set out to do nor faith in their ideas and concepts.
Certainly not change for the sake of it. Its because Windows Phone 7's sole purpose was change. This has been their whole spiel all along - to be different. And certainly some people won't like it, and that's fine, maybe Windows Phone 7 isn't for you. But if you can take a step back and look at some of things that Microsoft has done with the platform, to surface information and to bring things to life, I'm sure most people will clearly see that the method that they have chosen for their own platform exemplifies and brings out the best qualities and features of the platform, and fits perfectly into putting people first. That there is more than just one way to speed dial a contact yet still get more out of it than just a phone call at the same time.
Take some time and embrace how Windows Phone thinks you can do and accomplish things, and if you don't like it, then hey, Android and iOS are still out there. No harm done.
Also, there are only so many digits you can assign speed dial to, so unless you really just like everything, then you probably won't run into an issue of having too many tiles on your Start screen. The same issue presents itself on any other platform as well. You can have 100s of app icons on iOS, or 100s of widgets on your 100 Android home screens. Take your pick.
I wish they just let me type in the dialer and scan for both the phone number and the name (t9). And the phone number search should skip country code and other prefixed code (unlike the mango api which searches for a number with an exact match ) eg if I want to find 061234 it should also return 003161234 and +3161234 and vice versa.
This alone would kill all the need for a quick/smart dialer. I am aware of typing in the call log, yet you still have to click the name and than tap on the phone number.
TIP on dialing from history
Marvin_S said:
I wish they just let me type in the dialer and scan for both the phone number and the name (t9). And the phone number search should skip country code and other prefixed code (unlike the mango api which searches for a number with an exact match ) eg if I want to find 061234 it should also return 003161234 and +3161234 and vice versa.
This alone would kill all the need for a quick/smart dialer. I am aware of typing in the call log, yet you still have to click the name and than tap on the phone number.
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Click to collapse
Actually, from history, if instead of tapping the name, you tap the phone icon to the left of the name, it will immediately dial the number last used for that contact.
Not exactly what you are asking for but if you press a number followed by a # in the dialer, it will show you the contact phone associated with it and the option to call it. The hard thing would be to find which is the number associated with the phone number of your interest.
Sent from my LG-E900 using Board Express
As a former Blackberry owner one of the features that my company adopted was to send meeting requests with conference calls numbers in the following format (555) 555-1234x123456 in the location field of the meeting request. The "x" would be interpreted as a wait, like a ";" on Android. When clicking on the number the phone tries to open the number in Google maps. Our company now has a mix of BB, iPhone and Android phones. I am unable to find a wait character that works on all 3 platforms. The x works on BB and iPhone but not Android, the ; works on Android and iPhone but not BB.
Additionally, it does not appear possible to edit meeting request to modify the format of the dial in number in the calendar entry.
Also, Android seems to handle contact entries differently. Our default contact files also contain "x" for extensions. The phone converts the "x" into 9 prior to dialing.
How are others working around this? Any suggestions for apps? Etc.?
Thank you,
Eric
Anybody?
DTMF Dialer perhaps?