No Hardkey Speed Dail Tel Shortcuts, but Speed Dial App by Toysoft is Next Best Thing
While most of us lament the fact that BBY whiffed big time and ignored so many of our beloved one touch hard key short cuts and speed dials from our QWERTY keyboard, a few companies have developed apps to get us closer. I bough the Speed Dial app from Toysoft for $1.99 and it's pretty good (although I was charged 12 cents tax...I thought the interstate sale of software was tax free in MA?)...anyway, I digress.
But the app does a reasonably good job of trying to improve upon BBY's ridiculously cumbersome and otherwise insulting poke at speed dialing (perhaps better called "slow speed dialing). Overall, the app let's you create a speed dial icon for up to 128 of your contacts and put it on your home screen. Of course, you true 1st page home screen only has space for 12 icons, so by "home screen" they mean any one of the numerous swipe pages that appear on the device. Nevertheless, very helpful for priority contacts compared to the alternative. Those that you choose not to place on your home screen are contained within and appear after pressing the Speed Dial app (after a delay of about 5 seconds, not sure why it takes that long, if you don't have many speed dial contacts (I currently have loaded in about a dozen). The app also features the ability to include a pic for the contact (either from your pictures or from a pre-installed set of icons) and to name the contact. The speed dial app also let's you size the individual contact icons with
in the speed dial app, so you can have as many as 20 on a page (4 rows of 5 contacts).
One noteworthy add'l drawback: even after selecting a speed dial contact the app won't call them right away, it bring up their tel # and then asks you to confirm whether you want to call the -- another glaring design step backwards by BBY (this is not the fault of the app developer -- this is the only way they could design the app to work, given the constraints of the BBY10 OS).
So, they now get speed dial down to a science in as few as a 3 steps:
1. Wake up your device by swiping upwards;
2. Press the preloaded speed dial contact's icon (or swipe to the home screen page that he or she is placed on, if not one the first page);
3. Press OK when asked if you want to call that contact.
(Note: add more steps if (a) you have to open the speed dial app, ;plus 4-5 seconds and/or (b) if you have to swipe to supplemental home screen pages.