New to Windows Phone 8-Tips and Tricks

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BIGPADDY

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Sep 30, 2012
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Hi all

This is guide for all the tips and tricks for all new comer to the platform, to get better use of your device and pick up helpful tips for day to day stuff.

1. In the people hub, you can click on the letter (for example a), it pops up a list of all the letters and select the one you want to get to.

2. Highlighting a word in internet explorer like you are going to copy it then tap the magnifying glass it will start a search for that word in Bing.

3. Pressing and holding within a text box will bring up the cursor icon.

4. If you have multiple apps opened. Holding the back button, brings up a screenshot of each which you can scroll & switch between them.

5. When you press the microphone button, it records one sentence. When you press it again, it adds another sentence. And that feature including in the email app.

6. Under messaging go to settings and enable 'Group text' so you can send and receive texts where all recipients see the and can respond to the group.

7. Pinning the Store tile to the start screen, enables you to view updates available for any apps that you have installed, the live tile will show the number of apps that have updates available.

8. When you are in your email, you can check an email by touching the far left of the screen next to the email you want to check. This will bring up the check box for all emails. You can touch the far left screen again to close it.

9. Tapping the up or down volume, it brings up the volume number and ring/vibrate up top. You can tap the ring/vibrate icon on the right to mute or ring your phone.

10. Long press the keyboard on the dot (.) for a list of common punctuation (other buttons will give you more options).

11. Press and drag from number key to select a single number or punctuation instead of toggling the keyboard to the number layout.

12. Go to setting slide along to Applications and go into "background tasks" and disable the applications you don't want to run in the background, most of these will be draining your battery.

13. Start Calculator and then rotate your Windows Phone to the left and to the right - the interface will change into scientific and a hexadecimal calculator.

14. Rather than swiping photo by photo, display one of them, rotate the phone into landscape mode and then pinch 'out' (like zooming out). Your photos will then be displayed in a fast-swipeable filmstrip.

15. Having your cellular data turned off, images sent through text messaging will not go through. It will say "Get Content Now" (file size).

16. You can add words to the dictionary, by tapping the word and it will show the word with a plus sign next to it, in the bar above the keyboard. Just tap it and in the dictionary it goes.

17. If you would like a different ringtone depending on the person go to the people app. Choose the person and then choose edit. Tap ringtone and choose the tone you want for that person.

18. Go to your app list and press search, you can also search in the Store as well.

19. If you want to add music to your phone you can use the Windows Phone app or others like Windows Media Player, if you use Windows Media Player make sure you update your album information.

20. By default the contacts in the Groups are sorted alphabetically but you can now hold down the contact tiles & move them around inside the group just like moving the tiles on your Start screen.

21. Want to forward an email? Hit the respond button on the bottom left of the email and select forward.

22. Swipe right to close a toast notification at the top of the screen.

23. While listening to music, the player displays the current song and the next two under the album art. Click on the name of the song to see the full Now Playing List.

24. Have a app that has background support got to: Settings>Lockscreen>choose app you want to run as your Background>after you choose app, the option appears below it saying, "Open this App to let you make changes to the background"

25. When you open the phone and see the history, tap the phone icon and it calls the number directly.

26. Another way to call someone is to use Tell Me: long press on the Windows button, then say "call name mobile."

27. Screenshot is taken by pressing Windows key + Lock key at the same time.

28. You can double tap the space bar to end a sentence with a full stop.

29. You can press and hold the number keys 1,2 & 3 for entering fractions and power of 2 & 3.

30. You can press and hold the number 0 for the degree sign.

31. Double tap the shift key to type in all caps.

32. Press and hold the language key in the keyboard for additional language keyboards (you have to add, additional languages in settings).

33. When you swipe to the left on your start screen to reveal your app list you can tap the magnifying glass in the top left corner to search for apps on your phone, but you can also tap 'search in store'.

34. If you have a lot of tiles on your home screen & want to return to the top quickly, hit the Windows button to save unnecessary scrolling. This takes you back to the top.

35. For quicker scrolling through the app list press the search which is the magnifier glass on the side this collapses the alphabet.

36. On the app list if you tap a letter or # it will bring the alphabet up then can select the letter of the app you want.

37. You can send your location through texts, by clicking on the paper clip then select my location (makes sure location is enabled).

38. If you want to see your connections status (WIFI, cell signal, bluetooth etc.) tap at the top screen which will show the info, this will automatically hide when using apps and after a while.

39. When playing a game in kids corner the search button is disabled.

40. In the calendar app viewing in months, by swiping upwards it will next you to the next months. Swiping downwards next you to the previous months.

41. On internet explorer you can found specific texts on the website your on by clicking the three dots (option) then go to "find on page" put in the texts then enter.

42. If you hold &123 and don't let go it will bring up the numbers and other symbols, still holding select what you want then release it will return you back to the texts keyboard.

43. In the music player if you click on repeat twice it will repeat the song your on.

44. If you’re in the middle of the game and you lower/higher the sound you can get rid of notification by pressing back.

45. While playing music in the background you can go straight into the music app on the song by the notification by clicking on the title of the song.

46. The music + video app remembers the last video you watch.

47. If you have headphones and you want to stop the music just unplug the jack out and the music stops.

48. If your going to pin a website zoom into a logo or something then you get the logo shown on the tile.

49. HTML5 enabled music sites like grooveshark can use the music API which can play in the background others without cannot.

50. If you hold the up arrow on the messager it will automatically toggle onto caps lock on.

51. Press the volume button you can see ring + vibrate pressing it will put it to vibrate.

52. When an alarm is on, press any volume key, it will snooze.

53. If your calendar shows your Facebook events, this may be obvious, but clicking on said event is the same thing as clicking on the event on Facebook; you see the wall, who's attending, and the event information.

54. For browser sessions, if you want to remove it from the back stack, hit the start button, then hit the IE button (NOT back). After the browser reopens to where you just were, hit back. IE is no longer in the back stack.

55. In Bing Search if you press the (C) sign inside the photo you get detailed information about it.

56. In SMS Messaging if you tap & hold a conversation balloon you get presented with 3 options.

57. When in messaging, you can touch the person’s name at the top and brings you to their address book entry. Also, within the people hub, you can choose which accounts to see by touching 'all accounts'.

58. On reddit to get items as they arrive for gmail, instead of setting it up as a gmail account set it up with outlook and choose the server as m.google.com.

59. If you have multiple tabs open and want to close them after you are done click on the (...) on the bottom right hand corner, select tabs (which will show you all the tabs open) and click on the 'x'. This will close the tab.

Battery Saving Tips and Tricks


1. The capacitive buttons backlight turns off when on battery saver, excellent for watching movies at night.

2. To save battery you can turn off your location in setting if your not using it for here maps or other apps.

3. Go down to feedback in your settings and disable this, even though when you setup your phone you opt out of feedback, Microsoft still leaves it turned on. (Be aware the feedback option gives information to Microsoft so if your phone stalls or crashes or reboots - they won’t know how to fix it without having these reports to work with)

4. In setting go to Applications section slide down to "music+videos" and if you don’t use the Xbox music, disable it as this also will be using a bit of your battery. This is also similar for Xbox Games.
 
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