I Upgraded My T-Mobile Dash Battery

A couple weeks ago, more or less, I upgraded my T-Mobile Dash battery. I had passed the 1-year mark in December. These batteries are supposed to not have memory issues, so I wasn’t having any problems with the battery itself. When I got the phone, the battery would last me a good day and a half. That was before Twitter. Once I hooked up with Twitter and started following people and started being followed, I found that my battery was not doing as well. Up until recently, I have been using Twitter through SMS. My family has a shared unlimited plan for text messages, so why not?

The big test of the new battery came during the first weekend of SXSW. That period is a Twitter frenzy amongst the geekerati. Even so, my phone was able to keep up with the higher than usual volume of messages. I wasn’t able to keep up. I deleted many unread messages. Even with that, my new battery went down one bar the entire day. Late in the evening, the battery went down to two bars. Besides the text messaging, I also made a few phone calls.

I am very pleased with the performance of the super extended battery on my phone. I had considered buying the extended battery as the price was reasonable. It brought the phone from around 900 mAh to about 1,500 mAh. Instead, I splurged on the super extended battery which has 2,400 mAh. I still keep the old battery around “just in case”; but I have yet to wear down the new battery in a single day.

If your T-Mobile Dash or HTC Excalibur battery life is less than you need, I recommend making the upgrade. Face it, you forget to leave your phone charging some nights, right? Like me, it usually happens the night before a busy day when you need your phone to have a full charge or when you can’t stop to charge a full couple of hours. The super extended battery will save your bacon.

Geeking out with my T-Mobile Dash

I know this is a bit late to be writing about the T-Mobile Dash. In a few days, I’ll have had my phone for one year. This means that it is old technology. I only recently discovered the Voice Command feature on the phone and have been all over it ever since. It caught my interest one day when I was wearing my bluetooth headset and a voice started telling me that I had a message from somebody and read the subject to me. It freaked me out. I didn’t know it could do that. So, I poked around and learned that I could set it to read all my messages rather than just the urgent ones. While I’m driving, I occasionally take a peek at my Twitter messages. Having the phone read text messages to me as they come in saves me from that task, which theoretically makes things safer for me.

Looking around the web, I discovered that I could also issue commands to my phone to get it to do things like tell me the time, tell it to go to flight mode, find out my next appointment, and other tasks. So, the problem was that it required me to pick up my phone and press the Home button to activate the voice command. Once you do that, it’s pointless to issue a voice command as I can do the rest myself. I found a blog entry that corrects a bug on the Dash through a hack on the phone’s registry. Now, all I have to do is tap my bluetooth headset, issue a command, and listen to the response. I just made the registry edit today, so I have not had a chance to test it out.

The only thing I wish I could do is listen to my music via the bluetooth headset. If this worked, I’d buy the AAA battery powered headset to enjoy the 8 hour talk time.

UPDATE

I went and purchased the Motorola S9 headset, which lets you listen to music on your Dash using bluetooth. Apparently, there are two settings for the headset. When you have it as phone headset, you only hear through one ear. Notifications are one-eared as well. For the music connection, you get full stereo from both ears.

If you pair your headset with another device for either setting, then you have to re-pair it to your phone. Simply go to the Communication Manager, select Settings, select option 2 Bluetooth, option 1 Bluetooth, highlight your S9, then select “Set as Hands-free” or “Set as Wireless Stereo” depending on which got turned off.

Life With Windows Mobile 6

I took the bait and upgraded my T-Mobile Dash to Windows Mobile 6. I wrote a bit about the upgrade this weekend. Prior to the upgrade, I had a love-hate relationship with my phone.

What I Love About the T-Mobile Dash

• Cameraphone
• Voice recorder
• MP3 player
• Can hold a 2 GB memory card
• Web Browser
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• OTA Sync with Exchange Server

You will notice that, for the most part, these are all hardware features. I was originally going to get a Blackberry, but the pricing was insane.

What I hated on Windows Mobile 5

• I kept getting “replog.exe” error
• After Line 2 would hang up, could not unhold Line 1
• Predictive text would not stay off when turned off
• Getting too many twitters would freeze all messaging
• Required browser memory management (clearing cache)
• Experimented with Hotmail and could not remove from messaging screen
• Alarm is buggy.

What I Hate About Windows Mobile 6

• Requires browser memory management (clearing cache)
• Experimented with Windows Live Messaging, can’t remove
• Something has a memory leak that renders the phone useless until rebooted.
• Alarm is still lousy

What I like about Windows Mobile 6

• They added a plugin that allows you to control the media player from the home screen
• You can search through your messages
• Volume touchpad requires sliding movement rather than just touching
• Don’t know if this is useful yet, but they put Office Mobile in the upgrade
• They combined SMS and MMS under the same Inbox
• They combined the auto keylock and forced keylock; they now unlock the same.
• If you have your Dash connected to your organization’s Exchange Server, you can look up other employees in the directory. There is no need to keep all your organization’s contacts on your phone. When you enter Contacts > Menu item 2 opens your Company Directory.

The Upshot

Microsoft did a good job fixing some of the annoying things in Windows Mobile 5. These seem to be items that could be categorized as software issues. I am pleased they cleaned those up.

I’m still annoyed that a flirt with Windows Messenger and Windows Live in both versions left me with a messaging account I dont want on my phone. It’s like getting herpes. I can’t get rid of it.

I don’t understand why I can’t set a max size for the cache in the browser rather than let it grow until it uses up all available memory. Why force me to empty the cache? On top of that, now there is a memory leak somewhere.

I really like the look and feel of the new Windows Mobile. I appreciate that some of the annoyances were taken care of in this version. I wish that some of the serious issues had been addressed. I’ll keep using the T-Mobile Dash because it meets my needs. I would be hard pressed to find something better without making the huge leap to the iPhone, which doesn’t run on T-Mobile.

Windows Mobile Tips

Turning off XT9
Let me share how to turn off the predictive text on your Dash. When you are in a text entry screen or field, press alt+space to open the menu. This will give you four options.

1. XT9 English
2. ABC
3. Language
4. About XT9

Choosing ABC will turn off the predictive Text. In case you are wondering about the language option, only English is available.

Deleting Text Messages

I’m writing this because it’s not obvious how to delete text messages from the HTC Dash. Yes, you can delete them one by one. But how to delete them all is not intuitive. On WM5, you have separate inboxes for SMS and MMS. On WM6, both SMS and MMS are combined. Once you choose the SMS/MMS inbox, select Menu > Folders > Menu > Clear Text Messages. This will work for any folder you highlight.

You should know that for some reason, your phone does not wipe your inbox clean instantly. WM5 and WM6 both batch process the deletions. However long it would take you to delete the messages one by one is approximately how long it will take your phone to delete them. It will seem like your phone is frozen or acting up. This is normal while it is processing the deletion. If you have a few thousand messages, hope that nobody calls you because the phone won’t switch screens fast enough to answer the call. If you hard restart, you will see that some of the older messages are deleted. Your Dash will pick up where it left off after you go through the menus. I find that it is best to periodically empty my inbox to avoid having a few thousand SMS messages stockpiled (I go through about 5,000 per month thanks to Twitter).

UPDATE: Let your phone read text messages to you.

I discovered something new and totally cool yesterday. You can have your phone read your text messages to you when you have your bluetooth headset on. This is handy when you are driving and want to keep up with Twitter or some other SMS conversations. Here is how you activate it.

START > Voice Command > Scroll down to Announcement Routing and select Bluetooth Only or Bluetooth if available.
Then scroll down to Announce Messaging and select ‘Yes’
Click Done, and you are set.

Whenever a text message comes in, your phone will read it to you.

You can set Voice Command as a speed dial item to activate it. You can then press and hold the Home button, which is also the record button, to activate voice commands. If you have not activated Voice Command, then the voice recorder will kick in. After you press and hold the Home button, the phone will beep and show a little microphone on the top right. You can then speak your command. Here is the tutorial.

UPDATE

I just want to make note that I have successfully used the Dash to share my internet connection with my laptop via the USB connection. It does require you to have the ActiveSync installed. Strangely, Windows Vista knows how to connect to the web using your phone without installing ActiveSync. I’ve also shared internet through my phone using Bluetooth on a Macbook. Either way, you can go indefinitely as the laptop will charge your phone by USB connection. The Mac can’t do anything other than charge the phone by USB. The only interaction is via Bluetooth.

Also, I bought the Motorola S9 bluetooth headset to listen to music. It totally opens up your entertainment options as you can simultaneously charge your phone AND listen to music or podcasts. I am so happy with this product, even with its strange behavior.

As for Mobile Office, I created blank files and put them on my memory card so that I can open them and Save As whatever file. I don’t know why they don’t give you the option to start a new file from the menus.