Nice. Tx. 
With the upcoming release of the Trophy, I thought I would give you all some tips so that you're ready for your phone when you get it. With a little pre-planning, you can walk out of the store with all your contacts in the phone. Or open the box, and have it full of contacts in less than 5 minutes.
1. If you don't have a Live account (email ending in live.com or hotmail.com), set one up. This is what your contacts will sync with.
2. I think you can sync contacts with gmail but I have not tried.
3. If you use Outlook, and your contacts are there, you can no longer sync directly with Outlook through your computer/data cable. You can use the Hotmail/Outlook Exchange Connector, and sync your Outlook contacts to your Live account. Google it - the directions are pretty easy to find.
4. If you don't have the Zune desktop software installed, install it. That is what your phone will sync with through the computer, and that is how you will get software updates for the phone. No more Windows Mobile Device Center.
5. You can search Marketplace from Zune or from the phone. If you do it with Zune, before you get your phone, you can't install. Once you sync up the phone with Zune the first time, you can click install anytime, whether the phone is connected to Zune or not. When you connect the phone to Zune, it will install any apps that you have clicked install on while the phone was not hooked up.
6. If you install an app through Zune on the desktop, if you ever erase your phone and start over, any apps installed through Zune will reinstall to the phone automatically (though no data will be recovered). Any that were installed through Marketplace on the phone will have to be manually reinstalled. This is the case with getting a new phone, as well.
7. When you get your hands on your phone, first thing you do is sign into your Live account. Once you do that, it will begin syncing your Live contacts to the phone right away. SWEET. This is handy if you change phones.
8. Speaking of changing phones, if you need to erase your phone, click settings, about, reset your phone. You will get not one, but two confirmation boxes. It's as simple as that.
9. Setting up gmail accounts is a piece of cake, as is yahoo. Haven't tried any others (use Advanced for others).
10. Lose your phone? Go to your computer, log into your Live account, hover over Live at the top, then click Devices, and you can map where your phone was last (hopefully you turned on location services before you lost it), you can lock it with a code, and put a message on the lock screen, you can make it ring, even if it is on vibrate, or you can erase it completely, if you think you'll never see it again. All from right there on live.com. SWEET.
11. Use Twitter? MoTweets is the one I use. Nice. Looking for a FourSquare app? 4th and Mayor is the best, hands down. Facebook? Depends on how much you use it, but the MS app isn't too bad, and Facebook integrates with the People and Picture hubs as well. Gas Buddy is a handy tool, and I like the Geocaching app. Netflix app lets you stream movies to the phone. ShopSavvy will let you take a picture of a bar code, and will search for the item online, giving you both online and local prices, though I have had quite a few errors out of it. Where's my car is a good one if you find yourself in unfamiliar areas often, and have to walk some distance from your car. Mark the GPS location of the car, take a picture of where it is, and you follow the Bing map to the car when you're ready to go back to it. Oh, and if you're on a diet, and use WeightWatchers points system, download PlusPoints - that's my app (shameless plug)!
I hope that this proves helpful to all of you who will be getting your hands on a WP7 device for the first time this week. If I think of more, I'll post them. Got questions? Ask!
Dude, thanks...that was great.
Nice. Tx.
Great post. Thanks a bunch.
Great overview, hopmedic. One addendum:
Although you really do need a Live ID to enjoy the full benefits of Windows Phone, it doesn't necessarily need to be a Hotmail/Live account. Any existing email address will work with Live ID. Go to http://signup.live.com to get started. You can either use your existing email address (again, doesn't have to be a Microsoft-issued address), or set up a new one (Hotmail.com or Live.com).
You can configure Hotmail to read & control just about any POP3/IMAP account, so if you really want to keep that Comcast address, you can do it and just use Hotmail as a front-end UI. That said, Hotmail has a slew of features that make it a great choice as a primary personal email tool, so you may want to set up a new account and just forward your old email address to it.
Great tip about using the Hotmail connector for Outlook. I've been using it for a while, and it integrates beautifully with Outlook and the Outlook Social Connector plug-in. Mail, multiple calendars, and contacts integrate seamlessly. The only caveat is that Outlook can't sync to-do items with tasks. I think that integration may be planned for an upcoming release.
To get the most out of contacts, I'd suggest you explore Live.com, especially the Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn integration. You can pull your contacts on those networks in to Windows Live, and they'll sync to your phone.
Let's continue to share tips to get the most out of this sweet new phone!
Thanks, Greg - I wasn't aware that you could use Live with a different email account. Wish I'd known that before. My Hotmail account is probably 13 or 14 years old, and for most of that time I have just used it for my account that I enter when I know what I'm signing up for will send me spam. Now, Microsoft is doing an amazing job of filtering that spam - I used to log in now and then and find over 1000 emails, and delete them all, now even the few that get through go straight to the junk folder. If I could do it over again, I would have created a new account for my MSDN account, and now my Windows Phone developer account.
Yes, let's continue the idea sharing. If I think of any more, I'll post them, and if anyone has any questions, I can probably answer them. I've been studying this phone for more than a year now, and I've used one for a total of about 4-5 weeks, as well as having written one application for it, and am working on a second.
If you're interested in the new features that are going to come with the codename Mango update this fall, here's a link... What your'e going to get in your Trophy is amazing enough, but what's coming with the Mango update will knock your socks off! The press conference this morning was amazing.
Does that mean I can forward my POP3 email to Hotmail for synching? That would keep me from having to use Outlook Connector. If yes, could you give a brief tutorial on how to forward Outlook email.
Thanks,
Aximtreo
aximtroe wrote:Does that mean I can forward my POP3 email to Hotmail for synching? That would keep me from having to use Outlook Connector. If yes, could you give a brief tutorial on how to forward Outlook email.
Thanks,
Aximtreo
I know Live can be set up to go get your google mail for you - you'd set that up within your Live account. Not sure if it will grab mail from others or not.
I learned today that according to Joe Belfiore they are working on a plan to get Mango out to developers on their phones before the launch. That would be AWESOME in my book! 1. I won't have to wait for Verizon to put out the update, and 2. I would be walking around with something no one else can get. SWEET! The Mango developer tools beta was put out today, so I've installed that, and it's pretty kewl - the Bing local stuff works in the emulator. NICE. This phone is awesome to begin with - it is going to be WAY AWESOME when Mango arrives!
I know I saw this somewhere but how much memory does the Trophy come with? And do you know if we will be able to replace the SD cards with a larger one? I read somewhere that we won't be able to but I didn't know if this was true.
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
