[Touch Dual, MDA Touch Plus General] jbngar:
PART 2

MS READER

I had been using MS reader for my ebooks and it worked fine on my o2, but for some reason it seemed to be painfully slow on the dual. I ended up converting my .lit files using 'convertLit' and downloading Mobipocket to read them. It's not quite as pretty as MS reader, but it's definitely faster to load, and it takes you to your last read book straight away instead of having to go through all the intro screens. Second shortcut in clauncher, then!

TOUCHFLO

Well that cubey thing is super cool - so I spent considerable time trying to get it to have the elusive fourth face. BUT then I asked myself, 'what does touchflo do that I can't do with one press in clauncher?'

About this time I had to hard reset and rebuild everything because I'd added in some irrepairable registry stuff and the cube was whacked out completely.

I left it as three sides, then. Now - it's not immediately obvious, but the 'quicktasks' screen that comes up when you open the slider is actually part of the Touchflo 'family' and it's settings are in the same place in the registry.

So it was relatively easy to replace the 'Email' on the third side of the cube with 'new email' from the APlauncher screen, 'SMS' with 'new SMS', 'Notes' with 'new note' and 'calendar' with 'new appointment'. That way the icons matched up just great.

The problem is that now that I've figured out the shortcuts, it's probably just as easy to put an icon in clauncher for them! So rather than 1. turn on, 2. swipe up, 3. swipe across, 4. press icon; you could eliminate the swipes...

I'm finding too, that new things involving contacts (SMS, MMS, email, phone calls) are best handled by sliding out the keypad, typing the first few letters, click down to them with the navigation keys and press the centre key. Then you get a screen with options to call any of their numbers, text them or email them.

If you go the 'new message' route, you have to access the contacts list in a far more cumbersome manner - smaller type entries which are harder to click with your thumbnail and that you either have to scroll to or type an exact match for it.

I've also found the following when using the touchflo features:

* to get the touch cube every time, start at the htc logo and sweep up with the thumbnail.

* you don't have to be 'twitchy' with the photo gestures. A slower and deliberate circle or half circle tends to make it do what you're asking a lot better - more nail, less finger for the photo stuff too.

* for scrolling, press quite firmly, and use a lot of finger surface area. Too much nail tends to make it click. I imagine I'm smudging stuff off my finger and that seems to work well. For long scrolls do a finger 'flick'.

THAT RUBBER COVER

After only a few days of activesyncing, I noticed the rubber cover on the USB port was starting to not close flush anymore. A bit of research turned up that it was an extremely common problem. So I bit the bullet and cut it off, but I cut it in a way that I could put it back on if I wanted, by slitting through one of the sections that anchors around the little pin, leaving the rubber in a hook shape to hold it in when needed. I tried putting it in the freezer for a time, but that seemed to have no effect, and I was already sick of pulling it off everytime I plugged it in to charge or whatever. So I trimmed that baby off, right next to the middle section, so that it was still held in at two points, but so that the USB port was now exposed. I then took the remaining bit and trimmed it right close to its anchor thing, and slotted it back as well. So now the USB port is exposed but none of the ugly holes which the rubber thing slotted into are. I shouldn't have to worry about wear (because I'm not taking it off all the time) or expansion bulging (because it has one free edge), and because of the way the curves sit it looks like a nicely recessed USB port. I'm not certain the tiny little piece will stay put, but if it falls off (and I can still find it) I could easily put a spot of glue on it - it doesn't look too bad without that little bit anyway. If I did it again I'd probably leave a little bit more rubber on the side closest to the centre, so that the USB port looks better centred in the hole. (see attached pic)

CLOSING THE CAMERA/ALBUM

I found that pressing the X on the camera only minimised it. Fortunately there's a registry tweak called ok_minimize which you can change to make it actually close the app.

IE

Internet explorer is a dog for scrolling big pages. Replace your webview.dll file and it's much better.

.lnk FOR 'PROGRAMS' FOLDER

If you make an .lnk to the programs folder normally, it opens in a file explorer window - not cool. The solution is to make it point to the HTC app 'folderview.exe' and it works a treat. 'Settings' is not so simple though. You can map to individual control panels but not the main one with them all in there. A bit of a weird one.

Anyway, all in all I can't wait to put my dual to work now that it's been primed and readied - my wishlist at the moment would be:

* map double/triple/hold functions to the phone keys

* get slideclose to send a 'close current app' command rather than just go back to today screen

* align clauncher to the bottom of today screen (easier to thumb, and looks neater)

* figure out an .lnk file for the 'settings' control panel (this seems surprisingly difficult - in fact I installed some software that remapped the start menu and I couldn't get into 'settings' to remove it!)

* find a taskmanager or utility that actually kills activesync while it's connected

* to get faster at typing with the dang half-qwerty keyboard!

* I reckon a taskswitcher that used the touchflo 'across' gesture to scroll between open apps would be really cool.

There you have it - hope some or all of that is actually helpful! Thanks to all you guys out there cooking ROMs, writing software and thinking outside the box.

Cheers

jbng :-)