For the Windows Phone owner

We are a minority in the smartphone owner population.  Information is hard to come by via Google since it is scarce and the search terms frequently bring up irrelevant results.  Also, one rarely sees another person using a WP7 phone on the street.  We are an exclusive club, but welcoming new members  :-)

I've owned an SIM-unlocked Samsung Focus since November 2011.  Here I collect together information possibly useful for other WP7 owners.  I'm still familiarizing myself with this device, and have been pleasantly surprised at times, but disappointed on other occasions (my WP7 blog posts).  [UPDATE:  As of Dec 15, 2012, switching to using only Posts about Windows Phone rather than updating this Page, since Windows Phone is a relatively fast evolving topic]

How-Tos

• Create a custom ringtone - if you already have a ringtone file, skip down to Step 6.  Some gotchas:
• Make sure the Genre you set is "Ringtone", and not something like "Ring tone" with a space
• If you are testing whether the customized ringtone is in place, make sure you have not set a specific ringtone for the caller/phone number you are calling from.  For example, if calling from home phone, this phone number may be associated with your significant other, and you may have set up a distinct ringtone for him/her in the People Hub (Edit contact to see if this is the case) 
• Switch between applications - sometimes you have to flip back and forth between applications.  With WP, you can usually go back to where you want by hitting the back button although behavior is sometimes not as expected depending on which application you're using.  Alternatively you can hold down the back button and your currently running applications will appear, arranged so that the most recently open is most accessible.  On iOS, you'd double-tap the Home button and choose among running applications:  iOS: Understanding multitasking.  I would say the iOS approach is somewhat faster for switching between applications, but in general, having the back button close to your thumb is better than having to reach up to the top left where the "Back" button is typically on iOS applications. 
• Seek while playing music or a podcast - if you're like me, coming from iOS, you'd expect a seek bar to rewind/go forward.  For some time, I was stunned that tapping on the timeline while music was playing did not change its position in the track.  Searching online didn't help but actually WP has a better approach.  Press and hold what looks like the "rewind to beginning" or "forward to next track" to seek.  Much better than iOS where small changes in position (e.g. rewind 10 seconds) were impossible to do  
• Speed-dial - while there doesn't appear to be a way to assign a key to speed a number (e.g. holding down "1" calls your significant other), there are at least a number of ways to quickly dial a number:  
1. Hold down Start key until phone prompts you.  Then say "Call" followed by first name.  Last name and the type of phone number is optional.  WP7 will prompt if it needs more info.  You can also initiate the call "on speakerphone" by adding that phrase at the end.  Importantly, this feature works offline as well.  It's useful when you're walking and want to call someone. 
2. Go to the Phone app, which will bring up your call history; your most important numbers will probably be in the list.  If you tap on the little phone icon, it will call that number immediately.  Versus, if you tap on the name, it will bring up the People entry so that you can contact the person in another manner (SMS, email, etc.).  I didn't know the difference between tapping the icon vs. the name for some time, which makes a difference in the number of taps and navigation. 

Did you know?

• Podcasts: the default Music & Videos application will keep track of your position in multiple podcasts so that you can pause one and go to another, and then resume the first?  Awesommmmme! 
• Local Scout: Windows Phone has a lot of little-known features, ironically because it was designed to be less app-centric:  My list of WP7 features useful for the new user to WP7 (switching from another mobile OS) or veteran user of a WP7 phone.  Note that "Local Scout" is available in Canada with a workaround documented in the links.  
• Google Calendars: I am a big user of Google Calendars to keep track of stuff and prior to Jan 2012, Google prevented the syncing of multiple calendars associated with a Google account for Windows Phone.  This feature was already available for iOS.  When I acquired my Samsung Focus in Nov 2011, I had to create a number of new Google accounts, each associated with a single calendar.  This approach seems to be buggy, e.g. sometimes calendar entries I created on the phone would not be sync'd up to Google Calendar on the server side.  Just recently, after Google enabled multiple calendar syncing for WP7 six months ago, I tried this feature.  It didn't appear to work immediately as I didn't see my additional calendars associated with my primary Google account.  Doesn't appear to be a way to force a sync (CORRECTION:  press and hold Account name) and while I did consider removing my primary Google account and re-adding, I didn't:  it appears the next day, without any more intervention from me, the additional calendars showed up, woo-hoo!

Tools

• SkyDrive access - One uses Zune to sync media content back and forward between the PC and the phone, and Gladinet, which maps a drive letter to your cloud storage, easily puts non-media content up to SkyDrive for your phone to download.  The Gladinet software (like SugarSync and others) makes working with your SkyDrive as easy as working with local filesystem folders.  Same goes for your Google Docs!