10 T-Mobile G1 Tips and Tricks

Product manuals are lame. The last thing we ever want to do when we purchase a fresh new gadget is sit there reading through a manual. Instead, we love to dive right into the gadgetry and start playing with our new toys. So we went through the T-Mobile G1’s horribly boring 48 page user manual to find 10 useful tips that you’ll really want to know.

1. Dial by Voice
The G1 supports voice dialing, and you can easily call a friend by stating their name if you press and hold the Send key on the G1. Bonus Tip: If you want to add in another caller while you’re on the phone, press the Send key while in a call.

2. Use an mp3 as your Ringtone
We’re not big fans of people using mp3s as ringtones, since the music selection is often pretty awful. Nonetheless, we’ll tell you how with the G1. Open Music > Songs > and hold your finger on your song of choice. Next, select “Use as phone ringtone.”

Read on for more.

3. Access the Applications Menu from Anywhere
If you’re surfing the Web and want to quickly bring up your music player to switch songs, you can quickly do this by holding down the Home button on the G1. This will quickly bring up your Applications menu. If you want to go directly to the desktop, just press the Home button once.

4. Turn on Wi-Fi
Phones don’t just automatically have Wi-Fi capabilities turned on. To do this, press the Menu key while you’re on the home screen.

Next, click Settings > Wireless Controls and select Wi-Fi
Open Wi-Fi settings to force the G1 to search for available networks.

5. Place your phone in silent mode on the fly
You just walked into a movie theater a few minutes late, and you want to quickly put the phone in silent mode without browsing through menus to do so. Avoid this by toggling silent mode without opening the G1. Simply press and hold the End key to put the phone in silent mode.

6. Add songs to a playlist
When you’re playing co-pilot on a long road trip, the music selection is up to you. Make the song selection smoother by creating a playlist ahead of time. On the G1, open up Music > Songs, and then touch and hold any song that you want to add to a playlist. A menu will pop up, and you’ll want to select Add to playlist.

7. Install a microSD card
You can install a microSD card for adding more storage or using your phone as a portable hard drive (see tip 9), and here’s how. First open the keyboard. Next, look for a small memory card cover below the Send key on the G1. Take your microSD card and slide it forward with the gold teeth facing down.

8. Typing Tips
Insert special character: Press ALT + Spacebar
Delete entire line of text: Press ALT + Delete
Turn on all caps: Press Shift Twice
Move cursor to end or beginning of text: Press Alt while scrolling Trackball
Insert a Tab space: Press Alt + Q
Highlight text: Press Shift and roll Trackball

9. Use your phone as a portable hard drive
The G1 supports high capacity microSD cards, which means you can add up to 16GB of storage to it. That’s as good as carrying a portable hard drive around with you. To treat your G1 as a portable storage device, you need to turn on mass storage.

Plug your G1 into your computer using a USB cable. Navigate to the home screen and select Menu > Settings > SD card & phone storage. Next, select Use for USB storage. Now a folder will pop up on your computer, and you can drag and drop music, videos, or any file of your choice onto the phone.

10. Cut, Copy, and Paste Text
Copying, cutting, and pasting text from Web sites or documents is easy with the G1.
To Cut, press Menu and x.
To Copy, press Menu and c
To Paste, press Menu and v.