Monday, November 23, 2009

The Phone to End All Phones

I recently purchased the Samsung Moment









First of all let me just say that this is the phone of my dreams.  Working at a bank, I'm limited to what I can do online, so this is basically a mini PC I carry with me everywhere.  I can check gmail and the interface is fantastic.  It looks just like gmail.  I can gtalk and it doesn't drain my battery like my old HTC Mogul with a faux gtalk chat app.  It has a big bright screen, an easy to use keyboard, a touchscreen, and on and on and on.  To boot, I had a super cheap $30 SERO plan that I didn't want to give up, so by threatening to leave for TMO, I was able to get a $20 credit applied to my account, upgraded to the $70 data plan, tack on my corporate discount and I have everything for $42.  Not ideal, but doable to pay $12 more a month.

I've only had to work out a few kinks of which I will post some tips/tricks here and continue to add to this as I find them out.

1)  I couldn't get my contacts to load correctly. 
My first step was to open Outlook Express where I had synched my contacts from my Windows Mobile phone previously.  I exported these to a .csv file.  I then imported the .csv to Google Contacts.  I had to do a little work to merge emails and phones and get my contacts all looking good, but once that was done, they still weren't showing on my phone right.  My basic problem was my "Starred in Android" (on the PC) were showing up on my phone as Favorites and Contacts.  I couldn't get the "My Contacts" (on the PC) to show up under Contacts on the phone.

Alas, I figured it out.  From contacts tab on phone, hit menu. Then you have option to edit sync groups. I had to select "my contacts".

2)  I'm trying to get visual voicemail on my phone. 
Visual voicemail takes your VMs and converts them to email or text message.  I kind of assumed this was a feature you turned on or off on your phone.  That was a dumb assumption.  Apparently it is an app you download from the market place.  I couldn't one that jumped out for me to download, so my husband suggested using Google Voice.  Google Voice allows you to set up an account for your existing mobile number.  Set up is fairly simple and entails creating a pin code, responding to a text, and recording a voicemail message.  The cool thing is that now when I get voicemails, Google Voice translates them into both a text message and an email.  I practically never have to listen to it on the phone anymore and waste time going through 12 prompts to delete a message.  Plus since it sends it to my email, I have a text copy that I can save forever as well as an actual MP3 of the message that is attached to the voicemail.  Damn that's snappy. 

If you don't like it, you simply go back to the website and turn it off and your old voicemail system will take effect.


3)  Learning to use Voice Control
There's a voice control button on the right side of the phone (above the camera button).  No programming necessary to use this.  All you do is press and hold the button.  Then, you can speak things like Call John Smith Mobile 1.  You don't even have to teach it to understand your names or program it to remember them.  You can even tell it to Send Email John Smith or Play Playlist1.  Smart.

I'll keep adding to this list as I find more fun things on my wonderfully slick new phone.