Using International Formatting for Numbers

We've discussed how to access the phone numbers in your Contacts list quickly. But those tips are useful only when you can use the phone numbers stored in the Contacts list. In particular, if you are a traveler, a number in your Contacts list might need a prefix when you call from another city or country. If that is the case, you cannot use any of the Contacts list features on your phone a huge bummer, and a huge loss of productivity. One of the most important tips to speed up your dialing is to store properly formatted phone numbers, which are accepted in all areas you travel to, in the Contacts list in the first place.

Most wireless network operators allow you to use shortened phone numbers. In the U.S., you can typically just dial a seven-digit number to reach a local phone number. However, it is a bad idea to put seven-digit numbers in your Contacts list, especially if you travel a lot. For instance, the number 5551212 reaches different people in New York City and in San Francisco. At the very least, you need the 10-digit number, which includes the 3-digit area code, to dial anywhere in the U.S.

The situation is even more confusing if you travel to other countries. Ten-digit U.S. numbers will not work in the UK or in Germany. The best way to store phone numbers in your Contacts list is to use the international phone number format. To conform to the international phone number format, you simply need to add a +1 in front of a 10-digit U.S. phone number. Therefore, the phone number 5555551212 would be +15555551212. It doesn't route any differently if you call or send a Short Message Service (SMS) message to a number in that format from your home calling areathe operator knows what to do with it.

Using Voice Tags

Another way to dial a number from your Contacts list quickly is to use a voice tag. This way, you do not even need to dial any numbers. You can add a voice tag to any phone number in your phone's Contacts list via the Options Add voice tag menu item. To use voice dialing, you can press and hold the right soft key until the phone prompts you to speak. If your voice matches any of the recorded voice tags, the phone automatically dials the corresponding number.

The voice tag feature is very useful when you use your phone with a hands-free kit inside an automobile. You can start and end entire conversations without being distracted by the keypad and phone screen.

How to do Advanced Contacts Search?

As you can see, the default contacts search on early Nokia phones is very primitive. It can search only the contacts' names (only first names for Series 40 devices) and supports only the slowest text entry method. But if you have a Nokia Series 60 phone, some additional software programs will drastically improve your search efficiency. One such program is Smart Dialer from Moov Software (available for evaluation and purchase at http://www.moovsoftware.com/).

Once Smart Dialer is installed, it automatically runs in the background when you start up the phone. You can see it or stop it by holding the menu key and bringing up the application switcher.

With Smart Dialer running in the background, you simply start typing the number, first name, or last name you want to dial from the phone's idle screen. Smart Dialer automatically searches through your contacts and recently sent, received, and missed calls lists and returns a list of matches, narrowing the possibilities as you press more numbers. Smart Dialer's key feature is that it supports a very effective form of predictive text to match the search string to contacts. You can think of it as being similar to T9 text entry [Hack #58]. But instead of using a T9 dictionary to predict your input, Smart Dialer uses the names and phone numbers already in your Contacts list to come up with matches. For instance, you can type 642 to match all contacts in your Contacts list that have the following characteristics:

Any contact with a combination of mno, ghi, or abc at the beginning of the first name or last name. For instance, Michael, Michele, and Nick all match this criterion.

Any contact with a phone number that contains the numbers 642.

To make the search more efficient, Smart Dialer orders its search results by the number of times you've dialed the contact. You can also spell Rec (732) to get calls in your recently dialed, received, and missed lists.

To dial a selected contact, you simply press the green Call button. If instead you want to view or edit information about the contact, press the center key on the navigation pad.

Enhanced Speed Dial with the SIM Card

Your mobile phone's SIM card can store numbers and associated names just like a fancy landline phone's speed dial. The SIM card can support speed dialing for up to 250 numbers.

To start using this tips on a Series 60 phone, visit the SIM directory application usually found in the Tools >SIM directory menu. To add a number to the speed-dial list, select Options >New SIM contact, enter a name and number, and select the Done soft key.

To speed-dial numbers from your SIM card at any time, simply type in the location of the number (i.e., where it appears on the SIM's phone number list) and press the # key. For instance, to dial position 39, just dial 39# from the idle screen. Press the green Call button, and you're dialing!

If you tend to rotate among a few handsets frequently, you'll probably find this hack quite useful. Just remember that each SIM position can hold only one number, so plan ahead for that.

When the caller ID display of the phone matches an incoming number to a name, it first searches the SIM directory and then the phone's Contacts list. So, if a phone number is associated with "Big Uncle Bob" on the SIM card and "Bob Robertson" in the Contacts list, your caller ID would show "Big Uncle Bob" as the incoming call.

You can set up SIM dialing on Series 40 phones in a similar manner. Usually you'll find the capability as an option when you click the Details soft key while browsing your contacts.

Using Speed Dial

Nokia mobile phones have built-in speed-dial support. Speed dial allows you to assign a phone number to any of the numeric keys on the phone's keypad. When the phone is displaying the idle screen, you can simply press a key and then the green Call button to make a call to the key's assigned speed-dial number. On Nokia Series 40 phones, you can also press and hold a key on the keypad and the phone will automatically call its corresponding speed-dial number.

On some devices, speed dialing is also known as 1-touch dialing.

To assign a phone number to a speed-dial key on a Nokia phone, first you need to select a contact from the Contacts list. Then, open the contact, highlight a phone number, and use the Options >Speed dial menu to assign that phone number to a key on the keypad (on some Series 60 devices, use Options >Assign 1-touch no). The 1 key is always assigned to the voice mail number from your wireless operator (it is stored in the SIM card) and you cannot change it.

If you try to speed-dial a key that is not yet assigned a number, the phone will prompt you to enter a number for that key.

On some Nokia Series 60 phone models (e.g., my Nokia 6600), you can also bring up the key map for the speed-dial assignments via the Tools>Speed dial menu. If a key is assigned to a contact, the contact's thumbnail picture or name is displayed. For unassigned keys, the key number is displayed. You can use the Options menu to assign, remove, and change the phone number for each key.

The phone's built-in speed-dial application is easy to use but it holds only 10 phone numbers. If you need to speed-dial more than 10 numbers, you can use the speed-dialing feature in the SIM card directory.

Dial phone numbers quickly.

In today's world of electronic gadgets, we no longer have to remember phone numbers. Instead, we use electronic address books to locate contacts. The tight integration between the address book and the phone is actually one of the major selling points for mobile phones. But compared with dialing from memory, navigating the menu-based address book (a.k.a. the Contacts list on Nokia phones) is often a slow process.

Both Series 40 and Series 60 phones offer a quick shortcut from the phone's idle screen to the Contacts application. The Contacts application is typically mapped to the left soft key on a factory-fresh phone. If you customize the left soft key to another application, you can still go directly to the Contacts application by clicking the center key on the navigation pad (i.e., the joystick) on Series 60 devices, or the down key on Series 40 devices.