Help Things I haven't figured out yet on the Eris

[bbrad]

I am coming from a Blackberry Pearl on Verizon. So far I really like the Eris. I"m getting about 1.5 days on the battery. Work email is a priority on my phone. We have an in house exchange server.

I have found that there is no way to accept a meeting inventation. You can send an meeting inventation though.

On my blackberry, I used to add comma's and numbers after voice mail numbers to automatically type my work voice mail extension and passcode. That way just hit my speed dial and get right in to voice mail. The eris doesn't seem to understand what a comma is. It thinks its an invalid phone number.

I can't find a way to turn off the boot up sounds. Almost all phones have I have owned had a way to turn off power on sounds.

Most apps I don't see a way to exit the app. Seems some (like explorer) you have to keep backing out.

Anyone have solutions to these?

Thanks

 

[Caddyman]

for the VM trick just go to your VM contact, menu, edit, and back out the commas and readd P's.....just noticed this myself, somewhere between my old bb storm, google sync, and the eris things changed, but it saved the changes fine

 

[bbrad]

Caddyman, thanks for the tip. The p's worked great.

 

[Caddyman]

as for the apps being left open, and coming from a bb myself i know your concern, most apps can be left open no problem. some apps you might be able to hit menu and have a close options. if you are real concerned look into getting a task manager/killer app. i hear pros and cons of each. i have "advanced task manager" paid version (99 cents) and it works very good for this task.

fwiw though, i have maybe 20 apps on the eris and quite a few open all the time and i see no adverse effects in battery life or phone speed (memory)

 

[bbrad]

yeh, i downloaded a free taskmanager and it allows you to close certain apps. Just seems strange the OS doesn't give you an option. I also tried your sms tip even though my sleep time was ok. I like Handcent. tks

 

[Caddyman]

yeah i like handcent, not really MY tip, I found it posted all over at many places, not sure who actually found it.

 

[Nate]

I have heard that these Android phones are meant to run without having to close open programs, thus the reason why the option is not there. Strange.

 

[bbrad]

Couple more things I found. It seems my activesync mail icon shows the number of unread messages right there on the icon. The number never changes unless you go in and review the messages. Then it updates. You would think it would continually update as it syncs. I have download frequency set to As items arrive. It also doesn't activate the blinking light or light up the trackball on new messages like the sms and google talk notifications do.

Found google talk won't give you a vibrate notification if you go into vibrate mode. Only works if you check vibrate but then it vibrates both in vibrate and beep mode.

 

[dawnstacie]

yeah i like handcent, not really MY tip, I found it posted all over at many places, not sure who actually found it.

Can someone please tell me what this handcent thing is?!

 

[Caddyman]

it is a sms (txt messaging) app, similar to compsms

 

[pingram3541]

The p's worked great! Now if only I could figure out a better way for sending txt messages since my caller-id is permanently blocked and I prefix *82 to all my personal contacts.

The default txt message app won't accept numbers with the *82 in front of them, my other phones automatically stripped the *82 no problem.

So far I have just added an identical number without the *82 as type "mobile" so it shows up in the auto-complete list when I type in the persons name but I still have the *82 version as the default number for the contact.

(in case you're wondering, I spend a lot of time in the field as a service tech and my phone would be inundated with support calls if the number got out so I have my office screen the calls before transferring them to me)

I've thought about doing it the opposite way and dialing a code to block non personal calls every time I dial but that's an added pain and if I forget to do it, my phone will surely get blown up.

 

[Fynx]

The p's worked great! Now if only I could figure out a better way for sending txt messages since my caller-id is permanently blocked and I prefix *82 to all my personal contacts.

The default txt message app won't accept numbers with the *82 in front of them, my other phones automatically stripped the *82 no problem.

So far I have just added an identical number without the *82 as type "mobile" so it shows up in the auto-complete list when I type in the persons name but I still have the *82 version as the default number for the contact.

(in case you're wondering, I spend a lot of time in the field as a service tech and my phone would be inundated with support calls if the number got out so I have my office screen the calls before transferring them to me)

I've thought about doing it the opposite way and dialing a code to block non personal calls every time I dial but that's an added pain and if I forget to do it, my phone will surely get blown up.

Why not setup your SMS to go through google voice and send text that way, from GV instead.?

 

[pingram3541]

I get an error saying the message was not successfully delivered, probably because it doesn't intelligently strip out the *82 from the contact number.

However, unlike the default SMS app which doesn't even allow me to choose recipients with *82 phone book entries, GV allows me to do this, but then I can't edit the number anyway and remove the prefix before sending so whats the point?

(i.e. typing J-O-H finds all Johns in my phone book and say I choose one with the number *82-555-555-1212, it will then show:

John Smith (mobile) <*82-555-555-1212>

If I use the track ball to scroll to *82, as soon as I hit the delete button, it reverts back to the name and removes the H from the J-O-H I entered.

I think we just need smarter apps to know a prefix is obviously *XX and to strip it off as well as to remove anything trailing a number after a "p" is entered.

Shoot, the phone app is smart enough to know to match the caller id that is received 555-555-1212 to my contact entry of *82-555-555-1212. So why not do this for the SMS app too?