Database Users

Are you happy with the PPCPE dailer?

Having had my XDA 2 now for a few weeks, and having finally worked out most of the kinks of the really inadequate bluetooth stack (by installing the widcomm stack) I am now moved to address my other annoyances: the very feature poor phone software.
I expected a very configurable phone, but was very disappointed with the microsoft dailer. The short list of features I find missing are:
No separate ring tones can be assigned to each contact. This could be very usefully, as you would know who is phoning without checking the screen.
No software to keep track of your calls or GPRS allowance. Even my old nokia from 3 years ago could do that.
No way to transfer a call from the handset to a headset. I know you can do it the other way around, why not this way too?
Very little status information on the dailer screen. Why is this,when most cell phone screens look like the status display on a jet?
Anyways, there is alot more, and people may want to add their annoyances. Im really wondering if there is any software that can replace the microsoft Dailer (like Pocketinformant replaces the pocket outlook).
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Surur

Took me a minute to know what you're talking about.
No, I hate the built-in dialer on the Pocket PC.
The author of mobidial (http://www.mobidial.com) told me there will be an XDA II version.. hopefully soon.
-arebelspy

hey,
just a few comments....
re: No separate ring tones can be assigned to each contact
- i beleive the o2 xda site has free software for download; one of which is called powercontacts. i believe it allows you to assign a ringtone to each contact. i tried it when i still had the xda1...never got it to work. so, i downloaded a trial version of ringtonex; it works like a charm and i'm able to assign individual ringtones to any contact i want. i immediately bought the software, i think it was for around 9usd. now that i'm using the xda2; the software still works great. for ringtones what i did was record the voice of my friends, officemates, my wife, and used those wav files for ringtones corresponding to their contacts. it also works in tandem with the photocontacts app in the xda2
re: No way to transfer a call from the handset to a headset
-the xda2 has bluetooth and i use it together with the bt200 headset. incoming and outgoing calls are automatically transferred to the headset.
2 cents worth.
cheers mate
robson

Transferring from phone to headset is a headset dependent thing. My HBH-65 allows me to transfer to phone and back to headset, but my Jabra wouldn't have.

Thx for the great pointers. I am definitely getting the RingtoneX app, and mobidail or something similar, when it comes out.
I just wish that developers would design more for handed use, not using a stylus, especially as bluetooth voicedailing does not work.
About transferring to a headset, I mean after you pick up a call with the XDA, transferring the call to a headset should be possible, but has not worked for me yet.
Another minor peeve, why is the sms option not on the dialler, but on the menu bar, and why is speaker phone also not on the front, but you have to press a key for it. There still needs to be alot of improvement. Hopefully independent programmers will kick in and fix all these deficiencies. It does make you wonder if the developers actually use their own devices or not...
Surur

Very little status information on the dailer screen. Why is this,when most cell phone screens look like the status display on a jet?
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i think it's because that most cell phones screens is their version of the today screen
i most surdenly would not wish such a confusing cluttet messy interface on my worst enemy
(yeah of cause not all cellphones are all that bad some many are)

I dont know. At least they should have the battery status on the screen, and the network logo would not be ammis either (currently its difficult to know when you have no reception, or just no reception)
Alot of the stuff thats currently in the task bar could also be bigger icons on the dailer, and it would also make it look less plain and just incomplete, as if its been thrown together at the last minute.
Surur

well not sure if it's much help but if you install some bar like advanced wisbar on your pda you'll have batt status in the bar both in today and the dialer
suppose this is a pre customised vs. free 3. party customising
some people like to set up their device with personal customising and some people want the place they buy it to handle that
in that way i suppose xda and other such devices are more like computers then std phones are
of cause if one get a xda with all the stuff in the preloaded provider rom they get more of that stuff you want
of cause thats not saying that they get enough

Ive been a user of Icbar for a long time, but as notifications is so important on a PPCPE device, and its not supported, I am not able to use it anymore. This is unfortuanate, as I enjoyed knowing what my battary status is all the time.
Surur

If you want to use your finger to dial contacts try Fingerclix by imaginet software. I used it on my Samsung I700 and now my I-Mate and it works just fine.
http://www.imaginet-software.com/index.aspx?p=fingerclix_en

This is brilliant. It would be even better if it could use the phone key insteadof loosing my contacts button. Any idea how to do htis.
Thx
Surur

vetie said:
If you want to use your finger to dial contacts try Fingerclix by imaginet software. I used it on my Samsung I700 and now my I-Mate and it works just fine.
http://www.imaginet-software.com/index.aspx?p=fingerclix_en
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Thanks Vetie for posting the link also can somebody post the link for RingTonex. Man this is great stuff! 8)

Qman said:
Thanks Vetie for posting the link also can somebody post the link for RingTonex. Man this is great stuff! 8)
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http://www.mtux.com/info_ring.aspx
-arebelspy

How can I get the most out of my i-Mate Jam

Hey Guys,
I know it is probarly been posted before and if it has I do apologise but I want to know how can I get the most out of my iMate Jam. I am going to buy one with in the week but after finding a site like this it shows me just how customizible the iMate Jam is (wizard). You guys have shown me the full potential of this device which is pretty amazijng in it's self. So the main reson why I am writtting the messege is to find out what the most usefult features you have found from the device even if it's through customization what is the most useful features you have found and used I am particularly intersted in blackberry mainly becuase of its extremly fast bi-directionaly synching which has amazed me and espiaclly to find out there is a possibility to get it on a phone like this. Currentlt the CEO of our company has a blackberry phone this has an extremly [email protected]$e% up key pad and is extremly hard to use and after reading about exchange SP2 looks like it can turn our phones can turn into a push technoloy (just like the blackberry) and to get my boss away from black berry into a customiziable phone like the iMate would be fantastic instead of puying for ****loads of blackbery software and services. So what do you guys think? I like the blackberry becuase it can push a changes to a task, to a contact, to a schedule extremly fast in both directions but I love the imate becuase of it is ease to use and its customization and I was just hoping there was a way to convert my boss over to a phone like the magician. Should I wait for the SP1 for exchange for that push technology or try out a blackberry app for the Jam if it exist? and what woudl be some of the best feautres you have gotten out of this phone?

Firs tip: Paragraphs are good!

Yeah, I'll be the first to admit, I'm not going to even bother reading that post in that format.

Touch SMS

Why the hell has no one made a touch SMS program?
I HATE the one that comes with pocket PC with a passion.

I agree with you a million percent. I've used vito sms and pocketcm but they both annoy me...slow and inconvenient (in my opinion. I know there are a lot of happy pocketcm users )
Anyway, I'd be willing to pay for a skinnable sms app if it was exactly the same as the existing one (ie: has got the same menu..sms/mms, windows live, outlook etc, but just looks a LOT nicer)...so if there's anyone out there

Honestly, i'd pay too, and i haven't paid for any of my software for years.

as much as everyone will hate me for saying it. Id love to just see icontact with there version of threaded sms. not a huge fan pocketCM for some reason. but atleast they have threaded sms

Yup, people ar going to "hate" you for it. LOL
The big plus for iContact is its speed for the basic duties of looking people up and dialling them. It is a phone in the first instance.
I have both installed and use both depending on what i am looking for.

deedee said:
Yup, people ar going to "hate" you for it. LOL
The big plus for iContact is its speed for the basic duties of looking people up and dialling them. It is a phone in the first instance.
I have both installed and use both depending on what i am looking for.
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haha! yea. me too. I even created a CM theme that looks identical to icontact. it's a genius program.

I´ve found IContact V.0.5, and I'm using since that. The must is that with only two strokes I can match a contact and make a phone call, or iniciate one SMS, this is in my opinions the basic concept, and remain like this.
If somebody want to put in one application, contacts, sms, mme, phone call, outlook, opera, netfront, picsel, wifi, gprs, and ..... they are free, but don't complain about the monster.
PCM with all those screens and options to do this and that, might real good, no complains, but too much ways to reach a simple thing, find one contact
One more thing, what's the ideia about a finger friendly SMS app. ?
Menu ? Keyboard ?

Pisca said:
I´ve found IContact V.0.5, and I'm using since that. The must is that with only two strokes I can match a contact and make a phone call, or iniciate one SMS, this is in my opinions the basic concept, and remain like this.
If somebody want to put in one application, contacts, sms, mme, phone call, outlook, opera, netfront, picsel, wifi, gprs, and ..... they are free, but don't complain about the monster.
PCM with all those screens and options to do this and that, might real good, no complains, but too much ways to reach a simple thing, find one contact
One more thing, what's the ideia about a finger friendly SMS app. ?
Menu ? Keyboard ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Finger friendly, maybe not - it's finger friendly already I guess, but there's a loooong way to go appearance-wise. Something like iContact but for sms (a separate app) would be perfect. That way the styles match, and if it were to have the same qualities as iContact would be fast, simple, customisable and very convenient.

The windows one isn't very finger friendly.
Something like the iPhone's SMS program.

Touch H.D. - A review from a W.M. Virgin

I was due an upgrade from Orange, after having used a n95 for the last year or so, which was a device I liked. Works straight out of the box as a phone, with the features you would expect a modern phone to have aready implemented in a user friendly manner. Also has the capability to be updated and personailse as you see fit - mine had orange o.s. ripped out within a day of arriving.
Knowing an upgrade was due I spent an afternoon on the net wondering what to go for. Seriously consider decamping to O2 for an iphone, mainly because of the data tariffs there, but had my eye turned by this new Touch H.D. gizmo. Now partly because a few of my mates already have iphones, and partly because I enjoy being contrary, and also because I hate the way "Apple" are trendy and Microsoft hated, the H.D. it was.
Haggled away with Orange and managed to get 1200mins, 500 texts, 0.5gig data for 45 quid month. So in went my order.
The HD arrived the next day. I excitedly opened the very sexy packaging (I have a very sad affection for gadget boxes and keep them for years - even after the device has packed up!), had a quick read of the quick start, plugged her in and off I went.
Nice looking skin,quick to where you want to go. Seems good.
But then things got sticky. I wanted to find out how to bluetooth contacts over to the H.D. Nothing in the quickstart nor the pdf. I know, I know, I could of stuck me old sim in and copied the contacts over, but this is a new toy and we like to play, right? After a couple of hours got an answer over the interweb about how to do this. Phew. Then did the sensible thing of copying these contacts to the sim for safety. Uh oh - the dreaded duplicate contact showing problem.
Then I decided to try the browser. As per another post I could not connect to wifi for an age, then it suddenly started working. Furthermore, I was getting a constant "xml parsing error" when trying to connect via Orange Internet. Had had the phone six hours now, and had only managed to get duplicate contacts on! Arrggghh, fustration of the nation.
Sent a text to a mate, only had I? No sending confirmation. What is going on? Oh, all messages--->sent. Mmm, hardly immediately user friendly.
I was getting tired, so set the alarm. How primitive thought I. More primitive than I realised when I was awoken and finally worked out that three button presses were required to get the alarm into snooze mode. Three! And only then if you had randomly pressed the alarm icon in the top bar in the hope it would do something - couldn't see this advice in any instructions anyway.
So by my second day was getting very dubious about this hardware, even allowing for the mandatory new device learning curve. Happily I stumbled across this place. Installed all the recommended softwares.
Klaxon - hey, my alarm now works like all the other alarms on all other phones.
Adavance Config - hey now I get an sms sent confirmation, and my phone is faster.
Backup -copied my contacts from the storage card, after running this programme, to my pc, deleted the sim contacts and hey presto! No more duplicate sims, and a safe back up.
I then played around with the advanced connection setting and the connection wizard and bang - my browser now works!!!
Suddenly I start to like this phone. Nay love it. It appeals to the very big geek inside of me. Its hard to use, you have to batter away at it to make it user friendly. It's more like a p.c. than a phone - ding dong! It is more like a p.c. than a phone.
And here in lies a problem I believe for the majority of users who will gets this phone and will be flummoxed by it and bin it back to Orange.
It needs to be set up as a phone first if Orange are flogging it as a phone, and not a p.d.a. as they do Blackberry. Little things, like a decent alarm clock, sms confirmation, instructions for contacts, turn off sim contacts option. A much better wlan interface - akin to the N95 would help. On that device selecting the browser gives you a pop up which gives you the option of orange internet, or if one is available a wlan. A simple click on the wlan you want and you're in. All very easy, and in contrast to having to open up communication, wireless lan, wlan, advanced, to swap to a different wlan.
None of these things would take too much effort to implement, and would make the Touch HD excellent for a beginner out of the box.
Your average user though will find these irritatations unforgiveable in some circumstances, and if the rumours of high returns to Orange are right, I bet the above bug bears have a large part to play in this.
However, once the phone is personalised, and once it is accepted as a computer, then I think it is fantastic. It's gorgeous to look at and hold, there's lots of nice little features- cover flow in favourite contacts is good eye candy for example.
And now I realise Ive got another piece of Redmond in my pocket, I'm even happier. This phone is a geeks dream - the "chic of tweak" perhaps? After four days with it I love it. I'm going to love it even more in months to come when some clever peeps get Android running on it, or when WM6.5/7 comes out.
A fantastic computer that does phone calls, as well. But out of the box, not a fantastic phone.
Just my 2p's worth.

Interesting to read your experience. I'll keep some of those things in mind when I get my phone next week. Do you have links to the software you added from here? (like Klaxon, Advanced Config, Backup...) I know I can search the forum, but I thought maybe you had them handy to post.

Chris Cross said:
Interesting to read your experience. I'll keep some of those things in mind when I get my phone next week. Do you have links to the software you added from here? (like Klaxon, Advanced Config, Backup...) I know I can search the forum, but I thought maybe you had them handy to post.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Anything for our German friends ( 2-1 ;-) ) :
Klaxon:
http://www.koushikdutta.com/search/label/Klaxon
Advance Config:
http://julien.schapman.free.fr/touchxperience/advanced-configuration-tool.php
Backup:
http://www.dotfred.net/
Gyrator:
http://gyrator.brins0.net/
Remember also when you get your phone to add "file manager" to your list of programmes. The software is already on the phone, and you need it to navigate to your storage card to run new programmes.
Enjoy!

mooro1973 said:
Anything for our German friends ( 2-1 ;-) )
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2-1 LOL
Thanks!

excellent review that provides a good insight for winmo newbies, and I sure recognize my first experience in this, winmo is an acquiered taste and it gets addictive with time because yes, this phone really is an ultraportable PC with a phone slapped onto it. I'm gonna send this to some people I know still sitting on the fence

text help

i am struggling with this phone, at first i loved it as the potential looked amazing, but i used to be a heavy texter, it was simple with a normal phone, and could text with out lookin at screen, so was pretty quick, new i would have to get used to the touch screen, but i have it set up for phone key pad so i can use it like a normal phone, but there will be no chance of texting without looking due to cant feel buttons, but i find it slow and end up spelling words wrong, and have to delete and respell, then u press a button and doesnt register, so again get a garbled word and have to resplell, and worse is when it highlights the words, if you dont press space and try to edit something you get you word insert again either to the end of the original word or halfway through message - how do i turn that off i dont need it suggesting words, just want to type and maybe use the arrows to scroll to the next word, and not have it inserted randomly onto the message.
this phone is not great for texts or email. is there a better programme out there for texting with? cheers

there are millions of text input programs, but I recommend you: TouchPal (for Thumb-use, with the smart-keyboard) and TenGo (for Stylus-use). If you get used to this, belive me, you can type really fast. I know what you mean, once, I came from a life with Nokia, too, and I could write everything without looking and extremely fast, but the time to get used to a touchscreen-phone is much longer than you/me thought!! But after some months (!) you will see, you can type very, very fast, with this keyboards. Or wait until the new maila comes out (you can flash Dutty's extreme ROM), this is much better in full-QWERTY than the one by now. So, search a little bit, you'll find really millions and millions of keyboards!! Try some
Good luck!! And don't give up hope
Greets, cad^^

thank you, i will check, i have browsed forums but hadnt seen anything about texting, so again, thank you

No prob. Just look around, xda is for 95% of the questions/problems the best source. But if you are new here, look at the xda-wiki!!!! It is very, very, very important and helpful, there you get the most information!!! You see, its at the upper bar, the 4th icon from left. So, happy reading and have fun with your new toy And enjoooooooy it^^

I actually thinky the HD is better for texting than I thought originally, but your point about words inserting themselves within words is very valid.
What I don't understand is that the phone is capable of haptic feedback but it doesn't do it for the keyboard input. I assume the only way is to install Touch Response

yes, it is, but it's very easy to install and it's very good working! So, no probs But if you text REALLY a lot, than look now in the accessory section, they are currently discussing about external bluetooth keyboards. Me too, I'm interested in one of these, and I find 55$ for the Brando one not expensive.. Just look at it
Greets, cad^^

SPB Keyboard works absolutely fantastically on the touch HD, the fact you can press a button to make the keyboard fullscreen and horizontal for text messaging makes it particularly handy.
I had the same problems when I had my very first touch screen phone (LG Viewty) and found that texting was very difficult using a phone keypad layout, I switched to the keyboard layout and using the tips of my thumbnails to tap out the messages it works a lot better! Maybe give it a try and tap out a few messages to see if it feels easier. Trust me you'll get used to it!

Yes, I like spb-keyboard, too, but it's only in ugly qvga theme, I didn't found any wvga so, it's very unsharp and not good looking. ok, I know, I'm absolutely crazy complaining about the "look" of a keyboard, but actually I think it matters so, I really like the Touchpal (I'm writing now on it) and until I fully test the new HTC keyboard, I think Ill stay with this But thanks for your information!! Have fun
Greets, cad^^