Must Know Tips For Windows Phone 7

We all know that Windows Phone 7 is the new smart kid out in the market and since it is altogether a new platform by itself, there are few things which you might not know about Windows Phone. This article will focus on getting on few tips that would help you on your day to day activities with Windows Phone. I will keep updating this article as soon as I find something new and interesting.

1. Rearrange / remove your tiles
   Tap on the tile and hold for few seconds and the tile will come to the edit mode. Clicking on the right top pin will unpin the tile from the screen. You can also drag and drop to any place of the screen and tap again on the tile to release to normal mode.
2. Add application / contact to home tiles
   Tap and hold on the application / contact and a context menu will appear where you select an option “Pin to start”
3. Link / Unlink people
   Windows phone considers every contact of you in email accounts, SIM, Facebook and other accounts to “People”. By default Windows phone links similar names and if something is not linked, then you can link them by selecting the contact and tap the “chain” icon which will show similar contacts, if it is not shown you can search for the contact and link. This can be used for the unlink the same way.
4. Hide only Facebook contacts
   If you don’t want to see the contacts in Facebook who doesn’t have any other contact like email or phone then select Settings –> applications –> people, select “Only add Facebook info to existing contacts”.
5. Adding email accounts
   Settings –> email & accounts –> Add any account.
6. Changing the signature of mail
   By default, Windows phone adds a signature “Sent from windows phone” to all the messages you send. However, you can change them by opening your mail click on the ellipsis (…) at the right bottom and tap the “settings”.
7. View other folders of mail
   If you are able to see only inbox, then it’s the way Windows phone syncs your email account. It doesn’t show any other folders like “Sent Items” and other custom folders in the mail by default. You can add them by opening the mail, tap”folder” icon and select “Show all folders” and select the folders you want to sync.
8. Where are my older mails
   If you can see only latest mails, then Windows phone by default syncs only the past 3 days mails.To customize, open the mail and tap on ellipsis then select settings –> Sync settings and change the number of days you want to keep the mail.
9. Select multiple mails
   Open the mail, tap the second button on the bottom which will show the check boxes to the left of every message allowing you to select multiple mails for delete.
   There is a much faster way by tapping on the left most extreme of your mail.
10. Using cursors
    If you aren’t able to find any cursor keys in the key pad, then be informed that there aren’t any. For cursor, tap and hold on the text area and the cursor will appear just above your finger tip. Drag it and drop anywhere you want.
11. Caps lock
    Double tap or tap and hold on the shift button which will switch on caps lock. Tap again to release.
12. Search anywhere
    There is a dedicated search button on the right bottom of the front side of the phone which will show the search for a corresponding place you are. e.g.) If you are in “people”, it will search for people and if you are in “market place” it will search for apps.
13. Lock your screen.
    Your screen can be locked by pressing the power button once. Press again to release.
14. Disable camera when locked
    You can access camera even when your screen is locked by a full and long press on the camera button.However, this can be disabled by Settings –> Swipe to applications –> pictures + camera and switch off “Allow the camera button to wake up the phone”.
15. Talk to your phone
    You can talk to your phone for all the actions. This is very useful when you are driving. Do a long press on windows key
    Say a word to search; “Pizza” will search for pizza
    Say “Open market place” or “Run market place” or “Go to market place” to open the market place application. Similarly for any application.
    Say “Call Jebarson” and it will call “Jebarson” if he is in your contact.
16. Tabbed browsing
    Open the internet explorer and select the “pages” icon or the last icon at the bottom and now you can traverse across tabs, add or remove tabs.
17. Browsing desktop version
    The internet explorer in windows phone by default searches and displays the mobile version of the site you are browsing. If you always want the desktop version to be browsed, settings –> applications –> internet explorer –> Desktop version
18. Talk to your phone when locked
    If you don’t want to unlock your phone when you want to talk to your phone for getting an operation done, then select Settings –> speech and select “Use speech when phone is locked”.
19. Change the background of pictures
    Open the pictures, tap and hold the background and select “change background”.

If you are looking for any more tips on windows phone or you want to add in here, please drop a comment.