Windows Mobile tips and tricks - PocketPC Specific

[ben2ong2]

Better hardware navigation.  Some WM5 devices have dedicated "Start" and "Ok" buttons (e.g. the Treo 700w and the Sprint 6700).  Some WM5 devices don't have those buttons, but do have two buttons that launch apps (e.g. the T-mobile MDA and the Cingular 8125).  Having Start and Ok buttons makes it much easier to control the device without touching the screen.  You can change the existing application buttons to do Start and Ok instead.  Go to Start->Settings->Buttons.  Select the button you want to change and drop down the menu at the bottom.  The two you care about are near the top of the list (<Start Menu> and <OK/Close>).

Symbols not on the keyboard.  If you have a hardware keyboard that has a "Sym" button (often Fn + Space) you can use it to type symbols that aren't on the keyboard.  For instance, say the keyboard has a "/" but no "\".  Type "/" then hit Sym.  It'll switch.  Hit Sym again and it'll switch to "|".  This is also a somewhat convenient way to get non-English characters.  For instance, if you want an o with an umlaut over it, hit o and then hit the Sym key a few times.  It'll cycle through the various accents.  Or, if you need the Spanish ñ, hit n then Sym.

What happened to my backlight? On many PocketPCs, if you press and hold the power button it will turn off the backlight and keep it off.  This may be what you want, or it may be something you did accidentally and now you're wondering why your backlight never turns on anymore.  Press and hold power again to turn the backlight back on.  (On at least one PocketPC I've seen recently, press and hold power is a full shut down instead.)

Make the SIP stop coming up.  The PocketPC has a "Soft Input Panel" (SIP).  This is the little software keyboard that pops up at the bottom of the screen. (It can also be various types of handwriting recognizers, etc.)  If the device has no hardware keyboard, the SIP will pop up automatically whenever you get to a place where you can enter text.  If there's a hardware keyboard, though, we assume you want to use the keyboard instead of the SIP and don't make it pop up automatically.  However, if you tap the little SIP button once, we suddenly decide that you want the SIP to deploy automatically again, even though you've got a hardware keyboard.  Maybe you did, or maybe you let a friend look at your PocketPC and he said, "Hey, what's this do?" and tapped it.  If you want it to stop coming up automatically, let it pop up once and use the hardware keyboard as though the SIP wasn't there.  When you use the hardware keyboard, the SIP will go away and won't come up again until you tap the icon.  (The common mistake people make here is to put the SIP away and then start typing on the hardware keyboard.  That will put it away, but it'll come back again when you go to a new text field.)