Mind your T’s and P’s

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could set up your phone to make dialing additional numbers easier? With Palm webOS, it’s as simple as knowing your T’s and P’s.

 

When you are calling an automated “menu” system and know the numbers you want to dial, you can insert a two-second pause in the dialing sequence by inserting a T where you want the pause to appear. Need a longer pause? Enter another T!

 

Calling business contacts that have an extension that can be dialed after calling the company’s main number is just as simple. Enter a P before the extension number.

 

Tap the onscreen dial icon to begin the call. Now you will see a button in the phone application to tap when you’re dialed in to the company!

 

Looking for more ways to make or receive calls? Check here for more tips.

 

Calvin P., Customer Support

Comments

[Sam Kamens]

So why did you choose to use "t" and "p", when every other phone in the world uses "," and "x"?

The use of t and p means that I can't accept phone numbers with extensions provided by my co-workers who use blackberries, but have to change them before I can use them.

Doesn't make any sense to me...

[Karen]

These are great hints. However, I have tried inserting a dialing pause, both in a contact's phone field and while dialing on the fly. I always get "Verizon Wireless cannot complete your call as dialed. Please check the number and dial again." Any suggestions? Not being able to store additional digits makes speed dial all but useless for things like checking voice mail.

[SK]

Why would you not show this trick visually?

[Mary]

Okay, If I am talking on the phone and another call comes in, I answer the second call. How do I hang up or disconnect the first call?

[Ajalota]

I use this trick to call my relatives in India.

[Podgnosticast]

Nice! Thanks for the tip.

[PalmFan]

love the phone and its phone features. Just wish that the speed dial functionality would work considlstently. Sometimes (regardless of from where) the speeddial dials directly, sometimes I have to tapbthe name.thanks.

[Paul]

If you use capital T and P the dialing works OK when dialing from the contact list but not from a search from the phone app itself. I found the lower case t and p work fine in both dialing situations.

[MetaD]

Sam Kamens makes an interesting point about the convention for use of 't' and 'p' for pauses. I looked up Nokia support site and find that the largest phone manufacturer in the world uses 'p' also. Blackberry may be the outlier here - allowing ambiguity is a good thing. I also would like see an option to pause indefinitely - some phones offer '!' as a dial character to allow an indefinite pause until you press a button.

[Carl Jamilkowski]

I sync my Pre to Exchange; however, Outlook's phone entry UI seems to want to force the 'x' to be in there, even when I replace it with a 'p'.

[Greg]

This is an incredibly useful feature. I've always wanted something just like this for handling extensions. The problem is it's not obvious at all that this feature exists. It should accept X and E since I've *never* come across someone who's designated it with a P when giving their contact information. To make it a proper feature it should also be incorporated into the text reformatter the contacts app uses. It displays a nine digit number as (111) 222-3333 no matter how I enter it, but add an extension and now it's 1112223333p444.

[Slipstream]

Speaking of Phone app, speed and recognition of my using any buttons in it could be sped up tremendously. I'm tired of hanging up on a number I just dialed because there was UI lag, which wastes a lot of time.

[Wayne]

Palm board people (does not need general posting)

I'd like to thank you for approving my posts to the board. I'm one of the Palm fanatics. All the head-to-head review's I've seen have said the new Palm Web OS (when it came out) was the best.

Thanks for approving my posts, even as I point out where your competitors have caught up (wi-fi, multiple programs at once, card view) or passed (including FM, native divx, SD cards like palm's older phones, incredible OLED large screens) you.

It is rare when a company will let dissenting views be visible. I have a lot of respect for that. It's part of why me and my Palm 755p (with $150 phone credit) keep holding out for a new Palm phone rather then one of the HTC phones (I'm a sprint plan person).

If I had known how long it would be from the Palm Pre to the Palm Pre replacement, I might have upgraded right away.

[J H]

I see that I can create/edit a Contact and enter a 't', 'p' or '#' character, for example, and use this tip. This is handy.

However, I cannot take advantage of this functionality, in the body of a Calendar Item. When I look in the body of a Calendar Item, the 10-digit number is underlined indicated that if I press it, the dialer would open and dial the 10-digit number. However, and text, such as "t123456#" as in "18003334444t123456#" is not underlined and is ignored. This limits this functionality. Use case: I am away from my desk phone and I have a teleconference to attend. I have to remember the teleconference password, such as "123456", or write it down. Note that the teleconference password changes for every meeting and is not fixed.

Ideally, I would see the entire underlined text "1800333444t123456#" in the calendar item and the phone app would automatically handle the pause 't' and pound '#' request. Then, I could join the teleconference with one-hand operation. No need to remember a long password... no need to write it down on paper...
webOS 1.3.5.1 Pre for Sprint

[DMc]

just wondering regarding flash 10.1 for my pre-addiction, are we just waiting on Adobe to get theirs t'gether?

[J Guy]

Other have already pointed this out, but again why a "P" when everyone uses "X"!!!

[Ted Hunter]

Just a quick word. KISS, Why do you not take ie; a Fujitsu LOOX 720 PDA, update the OS and add a telephone app?.
You'd have touch screen, wifi comm, and wipe the opposition off the board.

[Eric]

I have close to 2,000 entries in my Contact list... most of them have numbers with an extension... the extensions are marked with an "x".

Why not make a OTA software update to recognize an "x" to be the same as a "p" because I do NOT relish the idea of editing 2,000 contacts... I thought my Pre was supposed to SAVE me time?