[REF] *Blackstone Hints & Tips* - Things you may not have known. UPDATED 30th July.

[REF] *Blackstone Hints & Tips* - Things you may not have known. UPDATED 30th July.

MOD Edit HDuser

This thread has now gone Wiki and can be found under
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=HTC_Blackstone_tboy2000

I would like to thank Screec for his help on formatting the Wiki page and tboy2000 for this great collection of information.
End MOD Edit

1. Using the Back Key
You can use the actual back key at the bottom of your phone to go back a web page or two in Opera, instead of bringing up the Opera menu and selecting the back arrow.

2. Exiting Volume Screen
For quick exit of the volume screen, tap anywhere in the dark grey background surrounding the vertical slider button.

3. Reduce Errors in Typing
In Input options, disable the number of words to show in T9 for less mistakes when typing and thus faster entry.

4. Improve Photo Thumbnail Resolution in Photo Tab
Modify or tweak a photo (such as adjusting brightness) using a image editor directly on your HD (eg: Resco Photo Viewer) and save and overwrite the original. This makes the photo thumbnails on your Photo Touchflo 3D tab hi-res instead of low-res.

5. Change the Order of Photos in Fav Album
Modify or tweak a photo (such as adjusting brightness) using a image editor directly on your HD (eg: Resco Photo Viewer) in the order you want your photos to appear on your Photo Touchflo 3D tab, as they are displayed in order of last modified/created date. The first photo you modify will be the last to show in your Photo Touchflo 3D tab and vice-versa.

6. Panning Around Zoomed Photos
Touch and hold a zoomed in photo until you see a white outlined box appear in the corner. You can now remove your finger from the screen and drag and pan the photo to see more of it.

7. Hi Res Contact Photos
Assign contact photos on your SD card directly to specific contacts for hi-res thumbnails. If you assign contact photos in Outlook and then sync, the contact photos on your phone will be low-res.

8. Better Contact Scroll Search
When scrolling Contacts, tap the letter AFTER the name you are looking for to make your results list from the top of the screen instead of the bottom of the screen. Eg: If you want to get to the 'P' names such as Paul tap 'Q' instead.

9. Hidden Weather Animation Easter Egg
In the Weather Touchflo 3D tab, tap on the black background to the left of the title 'Weather' and then immediately to the right of the title, again in the black background to see a hidden Easter Egg where the weather animations are cycled through. You have to be quick with your 2 taps.

10. Have Category Folders in Start Menu
Using a file explorer, add 5 new folders to your 'Start Menu' folder. Name them like: Web, Travel, Utilities, System and Media. Copy relevant shortcuts from you 'Programs' folder in your 'Start Menu' folder to each of these new folders. You will need to use a 3rd party file explorer to unhide system files and rom files to see the pre-installed icons to copy them to your folders. These icons are '.ink' shortcuts. Also copy the entire 'Games' folder and 'Office' folder from your 'Programs' folder direct to your 'Start Menu' folder. Finally uncheck all checked boxes in Menus in Settings page. This will allow all 9 folders to show in your Start menu on your home page, where you can access specific apps much quicker. Remember each time you install or remove a program/game, you have to either copy the new 'ink' icon to your category folder or delete it.

11. Use 3rd Party Tweaking Apps
Use 3rd party apps like 'Advanced Config', 'HD Tweak' and 'SKTools' to tweak and optimise your HD further.

12. Disable Beam
Disable 'Beam' in Settings to conserve power.

13. Haptic/Vibration Feedback on HD
Use 3rd party app 'Touch Response' 0.02.2 to add haptic feedback on your phone to feel small vibration everytime you touch the screen in any app. Ideally useful for Keyboard entry.

14. Protect Screen from Breaking
If you carry your phone in your jacket pocket, make sure it is with the screen facing your body to protect the glass from accidental external jolts/pressure.

15. Cover Up Blemishes on Casing
You can use a black permanent fine tip marker pen to cover up scrapes on paintwork of housing. Rub firmly back and forth with your fingertip after a few seconds wait after applying pen.

16. Power Off Reset Action
Turn the phone off and on if you want to reset without taking the cover off or the latest version of HD Tweak installs a Reset icon which you can tap.

17. Temporary Stylus Attraction to Casing
Once you have taken your stylus out and you need a spare hand for a quick second, you can temporarily stick it magnetically underneath your HD along the right edge - instead of having to put it back in and then take it out again.

18. More Contacts per View
Show more contacts per page if you check "show contact names only" in 'Contact' options. You get 18 names per view as opposed to 12 and a half.

19. Fastest Way to Write New SMS
Quickest way to write a NEW text message is through the 'Contacts' list and NOT through the SMS Touchflo 3D tab. Best to assign a softkey to 'Contacts' so it is instantly accessible from your home page.

*Number of taps through Contacts is 3 or 4:
1st: Tap 'Contacts'.
2nd: Scroll to a name.
3rd: Tap the name
4th: Tap 'Send text message'
Automatically ready to start typing.

(Can be only 3 taps if your contact is within the first 18 contacts listed so no scrolling is required. This is based on using middle font size and "show contact names only" checked.)

*Number of taps through Messaging is 6 or 7:
1st: Tap Message tab
2nd: Tap new message icon
3rd Tap 'To:' text
4th: Scroll to a name
5th: Tap the name
6th: Tap the message area to shift the cursor from the 'To: field to the message field.
Now ready to start typing.

(Sometimes this can be 7 taps if you have more than one number for a contact and it asks you to choose which number to send the text message to. Amazing it does not automatically recognise a mobile number.)

20. Super Fast Text Entry
Use the standard built in (non HTC) Keyboard for super fast text entry with a stylus. Don't forget the gestures. Stroking upwards from a lowercase key inputs a capital letter. Stroking rightwards from any key to another inserts a space. Stroking leftwards from any key to another deletes a character. Stroking downwards from any key creates a new line. Using the Small keys means you don't have to switch to the numbers keyboard as all numbers appear above the QWERTY line. Even faster entry.

21. Keyboard Usage
When using the HTC keyboards, pressing and holding a key for a second or two will input the small grey character inside the key.

22. Contact Entry in SMS
If you start typing part of a name in the 'To:' field and hit enter, you will get a possible contact name to approve by hitting enter again. If there are more names to choose from, the arrows will turn white for you to scroll through the names by using the dpad buttons at the bottom of the keyboard.

23. Zoom Size and Zoom Location in Photo
When viewing a photo in the 'Album', you can not only choose where to zoom into but how much to zoom into. If you gesture a clockwise circle in the middle of the photo, then the photo zooms in with the middle of the photo filling the screen. If you gesture a circle near the top right corner, then that specific area zooms in to fill the screen. Also if you gesture a small circle you get maximum zoom. If you gesture a large circle then the photo only zooms in a little. An anti-clockwise circle gesture will zoom out the photo. Vary your circle widths to zoom in at various degrees.

24. HD Friendly Facebook Website
For a HD screen friendly Facebook website, rather than go to the full website, try the iphone version: iphone.facebook.com
You may need to double tap to zoom out.

25. Messaging Gestures to Ease Use
In 'Messaging' you can move from message to message or account to account just by swiping your thumb left or right across the screen. Imagine each message/screen is laid out before you horizontally in a row, left to right with the most recent message on your far left and your oldest message on your far right. By shifting all messages to the right gets you to the beginning of the row and to the newest message. Vice versa for older messages. Visualising this as you swipe lets you know if you are going up or down your email/sms list.

26. Activate Links Without Zooming-In in Opera
If you are tired of having to double tap a web page to zoom in just to activate a link, try this:

In the Opera url bar, type: 'opera:config' (without the ' ' ). Click on 'Adaptive Zoom'. Next change the default number in 'Minimum Overview Zoom' to 70 or higher. Scroll down a bit and hit 'Save' and restart Opera. You can now click on links with your stylus when you are fully zoomed out on a web page.

27. Using the Casing Buttons in Darkness
To see the four hard buttons in the complete dark, place one hand parallel with the bottom of the phone. The light from the screen reflects back onto the buttons making them clearly visible. Alternatively it is also quite easy to estimate where the buttons are by visually dividing the lower edge of the backlit screen into quarters and pressing below the relevant section.

28. Increase Quality of Photos
To increase the quality of photos, open the Camera, go to Settings, Advanced, then Image Properties. Increase Contrast to 5, Saturation to 5, and Sharpness to 4. Now you will have better definition and much more realistic colours. Also don't forget to choose Super Fine under Quality in Advanced Settings menu.

29. Reduce Blurriness in Photos
To focus better, have shutter set just to Touch. After you have touched you have the whole three seconds to steady your hand and take a non-blurry photo.

30. Charge when Powered Off
Always charge your device switched off if possible. This makes the charging time shorter and helps the battery to "calibrate".

31. Activate Hidden Photo Modes
You can activate hidden photo modes using the 'HD Tweak' app. Make sure to leave the resolutions for these modes at 1 megapixel though or they may not work properly. For for the more advanced users, use the following reg entries:

To enable Burst mode:
Mobile Device\HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\P6
set "Enable" on "1"

To enable Sports mode:
Mobile Device\HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\P8
set "Enable" on "1"

To enable Video Share mode:
Mobile Device\HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\P9
set "Enable" on "1"

To enable GPS Photo mode:
Mobile Device\HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\P10
set "Enable" on "1"

32. How to Hard Reset your Phone
To hard reset your phone which means to delete ALL personal data and settings and have the phone in factory default conditions as if you turned on the phone for the first time after purchasing, press the following buttons:

1. With the device turned off, press and hold the VOLUME UP and VOLUME DOWN buttons, then briefly press the POWER button.
2. Continue pressing the VOLUME UP and VOLUME DOWN buttons until you see this message on the screen:

"This operation will delete all your personal data, and reset all settings to the manufacturer default settings. Press VolUp to restore manufacturer defaults, or press other keys to cancel."

3. Release the VOLUME UP and VOLUME DOWN buttons.
4. Press the VOLUME UP button to perform the hard reset, or press any other button to cancel the reset.

You can also use Clear Storage to reset your device back to factory default settings.
1. On the Home screen, slide to the Settings tab and then tap All Settings.
2. On the System tab, tap Clear Storage.
3. Enter “1234” and then tap Yes.

Make sure you back up all your data such as Contacts, Appointments etc or they will be gone forever.

33. Clean your Camera Lens Often
Remove the back cover and gently clean your camera lens with a soft cloth. You would be amazed to find fingerprints or dust on it.

34. Install Official HTC Hotfix
Sometimes your screen may stop responding for about 3 to 5 seconds when running an application that needs to use the stylus to click the screen repeatedly within a short time. Apps like SMS, email, solitaire, etc. The Hotfix will enhance the response time. Almost everyone should install the official hotfix from the link below. Please read the instructions carefully in the link as it only works if your rom is LESS than version 1.19.xxx.x.

http://www.htc.com/europe/SupportViewNews.aspx?dl_id=448&news_id=16

35. Quick System Status Menu Exit
When you tap the status icons on the top bar and want to immediately exit the screen, just tap anywhere in the grey background.

36. Enable Analogue Clock
If you prefer to see an analogue clock instead of a digital clock on your title bar, tap on the main clock on your home page, then the 'More' tab and then check "Display the clock on the title bar in all programs". Finally, when you see the digital clock on the title bar, tap and hold it and choose 'Analog'.

37. Resolve Squeaky Back Cover
A temporary solution is to use small Post-It notes paper to stick to the inside of your cover.

38. Cheap Security Measure for Lost Phone
If you were to lose your phone how could someone know who it belongs to, to return it? What if your battery dies and the finder cannot access your Owner page? What if you have a lock code on your phone that your finder cannot enter to get access to your Owner or Contacts page? A simple solution to all this is to write on a 2"x2" piece of paper the following words or similar: "If you find this phone, please call 07890 xxx xxx to reunite the phone to its rightful owner and claim a cash reward of £XX. Thanks!" Stick this slip to either the battery or the inside of the back cover. You are hoping when someone finds the phone, the first thing they will do is take off the cover and try to put their sim in it and discover the message. Of course you will have enabled sim lock on your phone to prevent them using the phone straight away. Seeing as they can't access or use the phone to their advantage, they may go the easy route and go for your cash reward. If you offer say £40 reward, it is still cheaper than buying a new phone and having all your personal data back - especially if you have no insurance. Let's just hope that there are honest people out there that just might pay attention to the message. You never know so you may as well try it.

39. Tube/Subway Map for HD
Do you want a train map for your HD? Simple. Go to 'Google Images' and find your underground train map for your country and right click to save it. In 'Photoshop' or any PC image editor, tweak it to make it more sharp and crop it if necessary. Choose 'Save for web' option to optimize file size and speed loading on HD. Save the image to your 'Favourite Album' on your Storage Card. The map will be there in your Touchflo Photo tab for you to zoom in and pan to find your routes and plan your journey. Very useful.

40. Clean your Pouch
Use sellotape wrapped around your fingers (sticky side out) to clean all the pocket fluff stuck to your suppllied pouch.

41. Unlock the First 6 Shortcut Slots in the Programs Tab
Using a registry editor, go to: HKLM (local machine) - Software - HTC - Manila - Programlauncher. There you will find 24 directories for the 24 shortcut locations. The first 6 (i.e. numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) have a value of 1 in the "read only" section. Change that to 0. Now you can go to the programs tab and erase those and then add the ones that you want in their place.

42. Add the Option to Reflow Text in Adobe Reader
To make pdf files easier to read on the HD, you can change a registry setting to activate the "Reflow" option in Adobe Reader.
In the registry go to current_user/software/adobe/adobereaderle.25/Enablereflow and change the value from 0 to 1.
Now, when reading a pdf file, go to Tools - View and select Reflow. Now zoom all you want without having to pan back and forth to read the text.

43. Exit Fullscreen Mode in Adobe Reader
If you are viewing a pdf file in fullscreen mode, just double tap on the screen to exit that mode. FYI: This still works even if you have activated the Reflow option mentioned in the previous tip on this list.

44. Faster Opera Browsing
For faster browsing use opera in portrait mode

45. Choose Which Default Number to Use in Phone Application
Touching the contact name in the Phone application list dials the default telephone number. This number may not be the one that you wish to use.
In order to use a different number, slide the "m", "t" (etc) letter on the right hand side of the contact line. The top of the screen will show you the number. In this way, you're able to choose the desired telephone number.

46. Opening Contact Details in Phone Application
Sadly if you tap on a contact name in the Phone application list, it automatically calls the contact. The only way to get around this is to swipe left or right on the contact which will highlight the name but not call it. Now you can tap on 'Menu' and then 'Open Contact'.

47. Increase Number of Tabs in Opera
To increase the number of allowed tabs from only 3 (default) to any other number, type 'opera:config' (without the ' ') in the url bar. Next scroll to 'User Prefs' and tap on it. Find the entry 'Maximum Allowed Tabs' and alter the number here. Scroll down to save and then restart Opera to see changes.

48. Contacts - Alphabet Bar Scrolling Up v Down
If you slide your finger down the Alphabet bar and stop at a letter, the first entry for that letter will show at the bottom of the list. However, if you scroll UPWARDS and stop on a letter, the first entry for that letter will show at the TOP of the contacts list which is how it should be.

49. Show Vertical Alphabet Scroller in Contacts
In 'Contacts', click on Menu then Options. The first option is called "Show alphabetical index". When this option is enabled you get an alphabet index at the top of the screen - "old style". If this option is disabled, you get the bar on the right side of the screen, which is much better. Some of you may already have the vertical scroller enabled.

50. Get True 5 Mega pixel Resolution When Using Camera
To get 5MP instead of 4MP resolution when using your camera, you must switch off Widescreen mode in the 'Advanced' Menu.
* Normal screen = 2592 x 1944 pixels = 5,038,848 pixels = 5MP
* Widescreen = 2592 x 1552 pixels = 4,022,784 pixels = 4MP

51. Use Gestures to Advance Days and Weeks
When using 'Calendar', if you are in Agenda or Day view, swiping the screen left or right will advance or go back one day at a time. If you are in Week view, swiping the screen left or right will advance or go back by week. If you are in Month view, swiping the screen left or right will advance or go back one month.

52. Get Better Video Quality When Using Camera
Use MPEG format instead of H.263 for better quality video output. This option can be found by going to the Advanced Setting from the Video Settings menu. Once there, go to Capture Format and change format if necessary.

53. Set MP3 as a Ringtone
In Windows Explorer, you can right click an mp3 file and choose to set it as a ringtone.

54. Improve Speed Access of Micro SD Card
Most Micro SD cards come already formatted as FAT 32 using 32kb clusters. To speed up your Micro SD access, reformat your Micro SD card to use 64kb clusters instead of 32kb clusters (FAT 32 remains the same). Warning: formatting will permanently erase all data on your Micro SD card so be sure to copy all data on it to your PC and the copy them back again after the format. You can use SoftWinter's StorageTools app to reformat the card.

55. Use Titles Instead of URLs for Opera Bookmarks
When adding and saving a new bookmark in Opera, be sure to let the web page fully load and THEN save it as a bookmark. Doing so, your bookmark will use the friendly title name for the web page. If you add a bookmark while the page is still loading, your bookmark will be using the url address as your bookmark's title.

56. Increase Frame Rate of Camera
If you want to increase the FPS of the camera to speed up picture processing, just turn down the brightness to -1.5 or -2.0.

57. Increase Wrting Space in SMS
Go to this site: http://www.ghisler.com/pocketpc.htm and download the 'arm/xscale/pxa'.cab file. Go into Explorer and run the cab file from wherever you saved it, and install it. Now go to Start > Programs and run 'Total Commander' that you just installed. Open the directory 'Windows' and scroll down to find 'thread_sms.htm'. With 'thread_sms.htm' highlighted click 'File' then 'Edit'. Scroll down through the file until you find the line
'<Inbox:content id="COMPOSESUBJECT" width="98%" height=35'
Change the value for height from 35 to 70 and then click 'File' then 'Save'. Soft reset the phone and your space for typing a message should be bigger.

58. Increase Speed and Fix Lag of Keyboard Tapping
Use a registry editor to make the following changes. Go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Keybd
Find "InitialDelay"=dword: dec - change to 775
Find "RepeatRate"=dword: dec - change to 23
Also set the suggested words to a lower number such as 0 and disable auto-correction of words. Now you should no longer hvae misspleled wrods.

59. Increase Resolution of Panoramic Photos
By default, panoramic photos are less than 1 mp. This registry tweak increases resolution to about 7 mp.
Go to: HKLM/Software/HTC/Camera/P3
Adjust MainCamCaptSize to 1024 and MainCamSupportCaptSize to 1744. Soft reset.

60. Quick Access to Manila Alarm Page
You can go direct to the Alarm page from the Manila Home screen by tapping the alarm info text in the lower right corner below the flip clock.

61. How to Calibrate Screen if Stylus Can't Navigate the OS
To align screen if it is not usable, press and hold Vol Up and Vol Down buttons together and tap the screen. You are now automatically taken to the screen calibration screen.

62. Improve Suggested T9 Dictionary With Custom Words
The Blackstone has a very useful hidden application in the Windows directory. You need to unhide hidden system and Rom files in order to find it and you can do this by using a 3rd party file explorer such as 'Resco File Explorer'. Find the file "eT9MyWords.exe" in the Windows directory and add a shortcut to this file in your Windows/Start Menu folder.

When in the application, add the most common words you use when using the keypad such as names, locations, user names, email addresses and other words not common in the standard T9 dictionary. For example if you are based in London, UK you could add the following locations:

Leicester, Piccadilly, Tottenham, Soho, Charring, Euston, Trafalgar, Clapham

and words such as BRB, DVD, coz, lol, xoxo, username@hotmail.com, ciao, etc.

63. Quick Access to Last Manila Tab
Go direct to the last tab of Manila by flicking towards the right anywhere on the screen above the tabbed scroll bar

64. Add Favicons to your Opera Bookmarks
Make sure a bookmarked web page is fully loaded and save and overwrite your existing bookmark with the same title to also save the favicon icon for that bookmark. This even works with pre-installed bookmarks. Just save as the same bookmark title. You can only see the icons when accessing the bookmark page through Opera and not through Manila.

* Latest update: Added entries 60-64

MOD Edit HDuser
All entries up to number 52 have now been added to wiki

One more reserve for luck!

Hi! The latest entries will always be the last few numbered (highest numbers). You can always check what has been added that day at the end of the list.

Fab idea. You probably can use hand nail drills that women use to add diamond studs to their nails. How would u know where to drill a hole and make sure it is lined up exactly? I guess a safer alternative is just to use the software reset apps like in Tweak HD or made by Singh.

Dodger said:

Sometimes my HD hangs and is really doing nothing.

Mostly during use of Opera and sometimes as a result of invalid logins.

The 4 buttons on the bottom vibrate when touched,
but no other response.
Even after 30 minutes nothing happens.
Therefore, no software solutions is possible.
And so, this solution works fine for me.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Make sure you add the official Hotfix to fix the problem when phone hangs for a few seconds:

http://www.htc.com/europe/SupportViewNews.aspx?dl_id=448&news_id=16

Will add to post 2.