A challenge to all gurus: Help me keep my phone!

[wtherrell]

Originally Posted by syrguy1969

I will agree with you a toggle for quick back + forth from Today to Shell would be fantastic, maybe I need to post it in another forum....see if a scripter bites!!!

What quick starts did you want on your Home screen? I basically took the ones I wanted and pinned them to the MRU page for quick access. As for customization....now that we can add our own background image, what else were you thinking?

I have my Main Menu key programmed to take me to Today screen. On Today Screen I have a P+ tab full of quicklaunch icons. End call key takes me to Now screen. In Now screen the My Menu key( Right hand key in bottom row) gets me a customizable page or so of my frequently used programs for quick launch from there. With the ability to put icons for all these apps in almost any tab or key you want, I cannot understand why some people think SPB MS is not customizable. Now with the new imarche customizer to add your own background image it seems the epitome of customization. Plus there are scores of icon sets available.

[Adrynalyne]

Wait...your end key takes you to the Now Screen?

How did you pull that off? Thats pretty neat.

[Cmass]

OK, I'm begging to get things worked out a bit here.
I put Spb back on but only the shell and not the other junk I had originally bought with it. But there are still some nagging issues:

* How do you guys have your actual PHONE set up?
* If playing tunes and I answer a call or bring up another screen or otherwise shut the player screen down, the only way I can get it back up to control it again is to go into the menu, select programs, find the player, bring it up and then hit "pause" or if I want the player to actually stop I have to go into it's menu and hit "exit" - which as we know does not actually close the player. For that I have to then go into the task manager.
It would be nice if I could push one button and have the player up instantly. And, what the heck is with the lack of "stop" buttons on these things? Kind of odd I think....but apparently nobody else cares since most don't have stop buttons. But again, the only way I see to actually stop is to go into it's menu and hit exit.

Suggestions?

[syrguy1969]

When you say "PHONE" what are you looking at doing?

For music, I find it fastest to map the player to a button, that way if you 'lose' the player, you can hit the button and it should pop-up again. Doesn't help the stoping issue I guess, but it is a fast way of getting it back on the screen!

I find AEButton Plus http://ae.inc.ru/aebplus.php works great for assigning multiple items to buttons (and there is a free version)

[Cmass]

Originally Posted by syrguy1969

When you say "PHONE" what are you looking at doing?

For music, I find it fastest to map the player to a button, that way if you 'lose' the player, you can hit the button and it should pop-up again. Doesn't help the stoping issue I guess, but it is a fast way of getting it back on the screen!

I find AEButton Plus http://ae.inc.ru/aebplus.php works great for assigning multiple items to buttons (and there is a free version)

Thanks for the button link!

Phone: How do you have yours set up as a phone? For example, if you want to make a quick call from your contacts list, how do you have your buttons mapped? What do you push & how fast & easy is it?
If you want to dial someone, do you use the standard dialer or a better one?
Did you disable the black button that locks the screen after dialing and if so, do you have a quick way to manually lock it if you are concerned about hitting a button while talking?
Do you primarily use a blue tooth or use it hand held? (I have yet to figure out how to use the voice command)
Do you normally use your phone sitting at a desk, in the car or, as me, in huge variety of conditions including 7,000 up the side of a mountain in a blizzard?

[syrguy1969]

OK then....let's see here:

I use PocketCM as my contact manager, it works with a scrolling feature and I have it mapped to the upper button as a single click (Memmaid is a double click, and Voice Command as a long press). I have around 20 of my normal call #s in the Shell speed-dial, I am sure you know how that one works. (in PocketCM you scroll to the contact, open it, click on the # and it dials.)

I use the standard dialer right now, I may try disabling it for the WM one though (we will see). I don't disable the lock because I don't like losing other icon images as well (I don't want to try to remember where what was in a call).

I use my phone (much like you) in a variety of settings....outside, at my desk at work, lounginf at home, in the car......(and yes, in Syracuse I have my share of snow-storms as well LOL)!!!

I use a pretty good mix of BT and hand-held. I use VC at times as well. For hand-held I mentioned above how I have that mapped, and as BT I press the on/off button on the BT once and VC activates.....works pretty well!!

Hope I answered what you were looking for!!

[wtherrell]

Originally Posted by Adrynalyne

Wait...your end key takes you to the Now Screen?

How did you pull that off? Thats pretty neat.

I'm not sure, The end key is set in "Buttons" setting to lock the phone. I tried to unselect this but could not (probably a registry key somewhere but I haven't found it yet. ) Anyway, there was some setting in SPB shell that I checked and it just started doing it. It is always locked when it gets there though. I am trying to find the key so that it doesn't automatically lock. OK Settings > mobile shell > Now Screen > check the box "Show the now screen when device wakes up" Now when I press the end call key it goes to the Now screen before it locks. Now if I can just find how to keep it from locking--can't change that selection in the "Buttons settings" yet. It won't deselect. Maybe I could program another button to turn off screen tnen back on. I know I can do that manually from anywhere and when it comes back on I'm in the Now screen. Then a single press of the end call key takes me immediately back to the Today screen.
We're almost there! If someone can script the toggling of the mouse-d-pad they could probably do this, too.

[Cmass]

Originally Posted by syrguy1969

OK then....let's see here:

I use PocketCM as my contact manager, it works with a scrolling feature and I have it mapped to the upper button as a single click (Memmaid is a double click, and Voice Command as a long press). I have around 20 of my normal call #s in the Shell speed-dial, I am sure you know how that one works. (in PocketCM you scroll to the contact, open it, click on the # and it dials.)

I use the standard dialer right now, I may try disabling it for the WM one though (we will see). I don't disable the lock because I don't like losing other icon images as well (I don't want to try to remember where what was in a call).

I use my phone (much like you) in a variety of settings....outside, at my desk at work, lounginf at home, in the car......(and yes, in Syracuse I have my share of snow-storms as well LOL)!!!

I use a pretty good mix of BT and hand-held. I use VC at times as well. For hand-held I mentioned above how I have that mapped, and as BT I press the on/off button on the BT once and VC activates.....works pretty well!!

Hope I answered what you were looking for!!

Yes! That does indeed help.

One thing that is a bit confusing: Folks often combine programs. For example, the phone came with a contacts manager that plays well with MS Contacts on the PC. But, installing Shell gives you another contacts manager. But then, some install yet another - dedicated - contacts manager such as Pocket CM or, in my case iContacts. Doesn't this potentially cause what people are referring to as "bricking" the phone?

How do you deal with S2U2 in conjunction with making calls? Right now I have the camera button mapped to S2U2 to lock the screen quickly and I'm trying out the slide to answer feature....which I'm not sure has much benefit.

So, you use Memmaid? Does that negate the need to map a button to the Task Manager? I have considered mapping the top right button to the task manager to quickly close programs but I'm getting sick of having to manually close programs all the time.

Hey, do you use a blue tooth stereo headset by chance? I'm attempting to find a good one so I can use the MP3 player as well as make calls while my phone remains protected in bad weather. A major problem I'm running into: The music cuts out fairly often. It is thoroughly obnoxious. At first I thought it was a transmission problem of the blue tooth itself but now I'm not too sure since the songs appear to come back on in the same spot. I would think if it was a transmission problem a portion of the song would be skipped while it was out. This makes me think there is a problem with the phone playing MP3s. I have also considered that maybe it is being affected by other programs clogging things up or by an Internet connection running in the background but turning all those off does not help.

- Chris

[Cmass]

Has anyone had issues with their contact manager when it is presented with hundreds of contacts? (in my case 750) When I attempt to scroll it (iContacts) it takes a minute or so for it to think about it before any action......

[syrguy1969]

Originally Posted by Cmass

Has anyone had issues with their contact manager when it is presented with hundreds of contacts? (in my case 750) When I attempt to scroll it (iContacts) it takes a minute or so for it to think about it before any action......

I am not sure about iContacts, but if this happens right after you open the app, maybe it is loading the buffer. I know the first time I run PocketCm it takes a few seconds to load all the data to the buffer!!

P.S. 750? Someone's popular