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Help Speed Dial

Android is designed to do things like that via labelled shortcuts (not blind long-presses on otherwise-unlabelled dialer-number-buttons).

I have home-screen shortcuts to insta-dial my wife and another to jump to her text-message-window (but i'd love a home-screen-button to insta-send a predefined message)

all you have to do is long-press the home screen, select the first option, "shortcuts", select "direct dial" (or for text-messages "direct message") and select your target.

If you end up with too many direct-dial targets, create a home screen folder for them, just be sure to add items in the final order you want them in ... I have not been able to find a simple way to arbitrarily rearrange icons within a folder. (Anyone know an easy way to do this?)
 
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To save precious home screen real estate do the following.

set up FAVORITES in contacts:
Go to a contact and long press on it, select FAVORITE

Then when you go to contacts press FAVORITES (the star icon) and go to the contact you desire

press the phone icon- whala: speed dial!


Are you kidding me? That's not the SAME thing!! the Android OS is just horrible for simple phone and text activities and the battery life of the ally is unacceptable.

I'm taking mine back tomorrow and will be planning on migrating to AT&T since the iPhone is the only tool where human factors is actually taken into account.
 
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the Android OS is just horrible for simple phone and text activities and the battery life of the ally is unacceptable.

I think you will find that the iPhone is going to disappoint you just as much as the Ally... The batteries are terrible and the interface / dialer and keyboard are just as cumbersome if not more than any other Smartphone out there as there is no physical keyboard. Hell, the iPhone 4 is so awesome it will disconnect your call if you hold it the wrong way!

If you worried about texting, and speed dialing, you should buy a multimedia phone such as the enV or Chocolate (assuming you are a Verizon cust.), not a Smartphone. Smartphones are to make everything convenient, not just dialing and texting.

If you give the Ally (or another Android) a chance and get used to all of the features, you would realize that you can add contacts as shortcuts on your home screen(s) for speed dialing and you can even use voice commands to call contacts.
 
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