HTC Eris Tips, Tricks, and Easter Eggs

[IzelTokatl]

To silence the phone when someone is calling you, simple turn the phone on its screen facing down.

Press and hold the Power button(end call) hard key to pull up power, silence and wifi options.

Press and hold call button to activate the Voice commands/dialer

 

[Cheese_ME]

The trackball, very handy. I like it for moving the cursor to a precise location to fix typo's, but here is another nice little trick I found.

Have you ever wanted to move a widget or icon one or two screens over, and didn't feel like deleting them and making new ones... or have you gotten tired of dragging them to the very edge of the screen... well then have I got a solution for you!

A nice simple way to move icons, folders, and widgets over to a different home screen is to long press on the item, and then move your trackball to switch between the different home screens. Soon as you land at your new home screen location, let it drop in place.

 

[Schoch]

thanks

The trackball, very handy. I like it for moving the cursor to a precise location to fix typo's, but here is another nice little trick I found.

Have you ever wanted to move a widget or icon one or two screens over, and didn't feel like deleting them and making new ones... or have you gotten tired of dragging them to the very edge of the screen... well then have I got a solution for you!

A nice simple way to move icons, folders, and widgets over to a different home screen is to long press on the item, and then move your trackball to switch between the different home screens. Soon as you land at your new home screen location, let it drop in place.

great tracball tip thanks!

 

[Schoch]

thanks for the tips

I've actually skimmed over most of the 240+ page user guide that Verizon has online and learned some cool stuff from that:

- To switch between active apps, press and hold the Home key (this is sort of the equivalent of Alt+Tab in Windows) and it will show you the active apps
- You can create folders in the same way you add a Widget, just select Folder instead. You can then rename the folder by opening it and then pressing and holding the title bar of that folder. To drag things into it, click on the up-arrow just above the Home button, find the app you want to add to a folder, press and hold it and drag it to the folder in which you want to place it. This is a feature that I hear iPhone users don't have and would like.
- Get the Locale app - it's amazing. You can have your phone automatically change various settings based upon your location as determined by the GPS or by time of day and/or day of week. It's one of the few true must-have apps.
- To move Widgets and shortcuts around your home screens, just press and hold them until they get the green frame around them and then you can remove them or drop them where you like.
- To remove applications, go to the MarketPlace and choose Manage Applications (or Downloads, I forget which). Touch the app to remove and remove it. It stays in your Downloads and can be re-added later if you'd like.

very cool thanks!

 

[DROID_Eris_JP]

To silence the phone when someone is calling you, simple turn the phone on its screen facing down.

You can also do the ol' fashioned: press the side volume down button!

 

[IzelTokatl]

Just discovered this tip, keep an an eye on your Available RAM/Memory. If your getting near 80% be ware that on a reboot your phone may lose service.

pre-2.1 upgrade, this was a bug in 1.X

 

[mrfarinhight]

Probably common knowledge, but keeping 3g turned off while not using it saves TONS of battery.

 

[IzelTokatl]

Probably common knowledge, but keeping 3g turned off while not using it saves TONS of battery.

You may want to mention "how" to turn off 3G.

 

[mrfarinhight]

Yeah to turn 3G on and off you have 3 options. You can create a widget by holding down the touchscreen, go to HTC widgets, settings and mobile connection. You can hold down end and select mobile connection. And you can go menu - settings - wireless settings - mobile connection.

 

[IzelTokatl]

Got this from the Moto Droid thread:

Instead of typing a period (.), you can hit space twice and it will appear automatically.
(props to: hotelmode)

 

[IzelTokatl]

Disabling Sense (or making it not your primary home screen)


From the home screen hit menu > settings > applications > scroll down to HTC Sense > clear defaults.

next time you hit the home button it will ask you to select Home(android default), or HTC Sense. Select Home.

You will now get to choose which home screens to use each time you hit home, unless you hit "Use by default for this action"


To enable HTC Sense again if you set the android Home as default, hit menu > settings > applications > scroll down to home > clear defaults

again hit home and select HTC Sense set to default if you want to make it permanent again.

just remember, Android Home default gives you only 3 screens, HTC Sense gives you 7.

 

[smartphone_user]

Amazingly its the first phone I have thrown that just goes right back together and nothing is broken. How is that for an easter egg.

I have thrown it twice and still in perfect shape

 

[IzelTokatl]

Backing up (protected) apps

Props to: gbhil

For those not in the know, protected apps are those that are blocked from being backedup by android backup programs/functions. This trick requires a PC to go around this protection.

Download and install the Android SDK. Instructions from any of the root threads will work.

Open the terminal and browse to the SDK/tools directory and run this:

adb pull /data/app-private/*

This will place a copy of all your protected apps in the SDK/tools folder on your PC/Mac. They will be saved as .apk files, and can be copied over to the SD card and reinstalled at any time.

 

[IzelTokatl]

Charge Cable, funky USB? No standard Mini!

For those of you looking to buy a cable to charge or sync your Eris, dont bother buying the funky verizon mini-USB, you can use any old standard mini-USB cables you may already have. They are cheaper and do the same thing.

eris uses a standard Mini-USB connection (as show on the left)

 

[wingnut#AC]

To bypass entering your password for voice mail:
Menu > Settings > Call Settings > Voicemail > *86PXXXX# (The x's are your password)

Didn't work for me ... but is the "p" above case sensitive because I couldn't find how to get caps to work.

 

[mrfarinhight]

Just to let you guys know i figured out today that if your lock screen is up you can hold down the menu button and it unlocks it. you might already know, figured I'd throw it out there.

 

[xesso]

To silence the phone when someone is calling you, simple turn the phone on its screen facing down.

If you do turn your phone face down when you are getting a call it doesn't just silence your phone it will send it straight to voice mail. I found that out the hard way.

 

[bayb63]

Disabling Sense (or making it not your primary home screen)


From the home screen hit menu > settings > applications > scroll down to HTC Sense > clear defaults.

next time you hit the home button it will ask you to select Home(android default), or HTC Sense. Select Home.

You will now get to choose which home screens to use each time you hit home, unless you hit "Use by default for this action"


To enable HTC Sense again if you set the android Home as default, hit menu > settings > applications > scroll down to home > clear defaults

again hit home and select HTC Sense set to default if you want to make it permanent again.

just remember, Android Home default gives you only 3 screens, HTC Sense gives you 7.

This is awesome, had no clue one would run the normal android, one thing ive nocied im saving a ton of battery by not running htc sence.

 

[atrain826]

is there a way to update all apps that need updated at one time, or do you just have to update each app one at a time

 

[IzelTokatl]

one at a time that im aware of, you want to post questions in the main forum.