MobileViews Blog

Category: Mobile Devices

  • Configure Pocket PC Word Completion Your Way

    Word CompletionA Windows Mobile Pocket PC feature that has always impressed me is Word Completion. It can help you get around the relatively slowness of pecking or writing in the SIP (Soft Input Panel) with a stylus or typing on a physical QWERTY keyboard by suggesting and auto-completing complete words.
    However, you may not have found it very useful if you left it with its default setting of suggesting a single word after the two letters are entered. You can change these settings by getting to the Word Completion configuration screen:

    • Start
    • Settings
    • Input
    • Word Completion (tab on Input window)

    I find that suggestions after just entering two characters doesn’t provide enough predictive information for word completion. So, I set mine to start suggesting words after entering the first three letters. I also found that a single suggestion doesn’t have a high enough hit rate. So, I have word completion suggest three words instead. These suggestions are displayed in a drop-down menu as seen below. You can use the arrow keys to navigate the list. So, you never need to take your fingers off of the keyboard use the list. Try playing around with the settings until you find one that fits your writing or thumb typing style best. You’ll probably find your Pocket PC becomes much more productive after tinkering with this setting.
    Word completion example

  • Google Calendar SMS Reminders

    Google announced a new feature for their Calendar today…

    Calendar on the go

    You can now have Google Calendar send event reminders to your phone via an SMS message. You can find Google’s documentation here…

    Google Calendar Notifications

    Here’s a bit of advice before you try this service out. Check what your SMS text message quote is. You might get a surprisingly large bill if you have Google Calendar alert you to every event.

  • MobiBlogr: Mobile Blog Cient for Windows Mobile

    Here’s an interesting free mobile blogging client for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

    MobiBlogr

    And, yes, it looks like the letter “e” has suffered another casualty here. The actual download is a bit difficult to find. So, here’s a direct link to it.

  • Just Click the Power Button to Turn on a Windows Mobile Smartphone

    Every now and then I read or hear a comment somewhere that you have to “press and hold” a Windows Mobile Smartphone power button to turn it on. While this may be true for some models, it is not true for the Smartphone models I’ve tried over the years. For example, I’ve heard this specifically about the T-Mobile SDA that I use. But, that is not the case for the SDA. If you currently press and hold your Smartphone power button for a long time waiting for it to turn on, try this instead: Press the power button down, let it go, and just wait for a minute. It takes a while, but you should see the power light blink, and then LCD should power up shortly thereafter. Smartphones seem to take forever to start up. So, you still need to be patient regarding that part of the boot process. But, you should not need to press and hold the power button itself for a long time.

  • Speed Up Windows Mobile By Deleting Its Internet Explorer Cache

    Most people name ActiveSync (Windows Mobile Device Center on Windows Vista) as the most annoying aspect of working with a Windows Mobile Pocket PC (Phone Edition) or Smartphone. The second most annoying aspect is Windows Mobile Memory Management (or lack thereof). This of course always brings up the “X” button that doesn’t actually close the application as it does in Windows XP/Vista. It just hides the display and shows you the previously used application or screen. But, I’m not going there today. Instead, I’ll  mention something else.

    If you use your Windows Mobile Internet Explorer, you may notice your device becoming more and more sluggish overall after a time. Like its desktop counterpart, Windows Mobile IE caches web pages as you surf the web. This cache can grows to take up a couple of megabytes of memory on your system which doesn’t have much memory to begin with. The solution is to pop into Windows Mobile IE’s options menu and delete the cache every now and then. If you use WMIE a lot, you might want to do this at least once day. I tend to empty the cache about once a week.

  • Duplicate Outlook Contacts and Appointments

    Reader M.L. writes: Am using Activesync4.5 and when I re-sync my Moto Q, I get duplicates in my contacts & calendars. There is no info on how to avoid this on the Activesync 4.5 “help & How-to” pages.

    First, aargh! I hate it when that happens. And, yes, it happens to me too. Not all duplicates are caused by ActiveSync, but it sure does create its share of Outlook headaches. And, if you live in the US and applied the Windows Mobile Daylight Savings change patch in March, take a look at birthdays in your calendar. Some of them may stretch across two days now.

    I tend to be extremely cautious with my PIM data since I’ve been managing this data for over 10 years now (after getting my first Windows CE Handheld PC — an HP 320LX that still works!). So, I backup my Outlook data and then manually remove dups from Outlook before syncing with a Windows Mobile device. However, there are techniques and tools that you may want to evaluate for use. Here are a pair of references that may help.

    Sperry Software article: Prevent and Remove Microsoft Outlook Duplicates

    Outlook Duplicate Items Remover 1.2