Windows Phone 7 features an interface that's pretty unique among smartphones, shunning the rows of many icons that are well known to iOS and Android users (and users of Windows Mobile and Pocket PC devices) for large live tiles and a sleek, somewhat sparse, modern design. There are a number of customizations you can make to your phone that can help make it your own, and we'll discuss some of those. Others, like changing your wallpaper on the Lock screen or changing the picture displayed on the Pictures live tile, will be discussed in future chapters.
Perhaps the first customization you might want to make would be to re-arrange the live tiles on your Start screen. This is easily done by pressing and holding a given tile until it becomes highlighted and shows a small pushpin button in the upper right. You can then either drag that item to a new position (the other tiles will re-arrange themselves; see Figure 6-1) or press the pushpin button to remove the tile from your Start screen (it will still be available in application list, accessible by pressing the arrow in the upper right of the Start screen).
To take an item from the application list and pin it to the Start screen, tap and hold any item until the Pin to Start option appears (see Figure 6-2). It will be added to the bottom of the Start screen, and you can re-arrange it wherever you wish using the same method just described.
Blue on black isn't everyone's idea of a good look or inviting interface. Here are the simple steps to customizing your theme options.
Turn on your phone and unlock it. Press the arrow in the upper right-hand of the screen to show a list of all options, scroll down, and tap Settings (see Figure 6-3).
Tap Theme to bring up the theme options (see Figure 6-4).
The first option on this page allows you to change the background from dark (black) to light (white).
Tip
Choosing (or keeping) the background set to "dark" will help conserve battery power!
The second option lets you choose between ten "accent" colors. The color you choose here will be the background color of your live tiles on the Start screen, and will accent text throughout the phone (e.g., links, bolded text, etc.). Pick one that you like!
Once done you can exit out by hitting either the back button or the Windows button to return directly to the Start screen. As you can see from Figure 6-5, I chose a light background with red accent text!
Tip
Sometimes you might want to play with the accent color and background with an eye for specifically how the Home screen will look. You can quickly see the effect of your choices by changing the setting, hitting the Windows key, and then hitting the back button to make any additional changes. This saves time by eliminating the need to navigate the settings menu!
Note
The icons in the application list that are part of Windows Phone 7 (as opposed to applications you might download from the Marketplace) will change their background color to match your accent color!
Your phone can automatically adjust the brightness of the screen based on the light level around you, or you can set it manually.
Turn on your phone and unlock it. Press the arrow in the upper right-hand of the screen to show a list of all options, scroll down, and tap Settings (see Figure 6-3).
Tap Brightness.
At the top, you can toggle the Automatically Adjust setting on and off. This setting is useful if you'd like the phone to attempt to adjust the brightness depending on lighting (e.g., brighter in darker lighting conditions, not so bright in bright environments). Sometimes this may not be optimal, though, such as when working outdoors on a sunny day while wearing sunglasses. (Your phone wants to be dim, but you need it brighter to see through the glasses!)
Turning Automatically Adjust off lets you manually adjust the level of brightness using the drop-down box below. Change the settings until your screen is at a brightness you find comfortable.
Windows Phone 7 lets you customize your ringtone and other sounds that your phone makes through the Ringtones and Sounds settings. (The options are shown in the following list.) To access, open settings (see Step 1 in the section "Changing the Theme"), and tap Ringtones and Sounds to bring up a screen similar to Figure 6-6. Figure 6-7 shows the second set of settings visible by scrolling up.
Ringer and Vibrate: These two settings toggle on or off the audible ringtone and the vibration function, respectively. You may wish to silence the ringer during a large meeting or other event in which having your phone going off like a banshee would be inappropriate and/or annoying. The vibrate function can also be turned off, for times when you don't wish to be bothered at all, or for those meetings in rooms with nice wooden tables that phones "dance" across when on vibrate! You can also silence your ringer, set it to vibrate, or set it louder by using the volume up or down keys while you're on the Start screen (and not playing music) or the Lock screen. Press either key, and then tap the Ring icon on the right. If Vibrate is enabled, your phone will go into Vibrate mode. If not, it will simply go into Silent mode. To return to your previous setting, press one of the volume keys again, and tap the Vibrate or Silent icon.
Ringtone: Tapping the gray box will bring up a list of available ringtones. You can preview each one by tapping the Play arrow next to the entry (see Figure 6-8). After you're done previewing, tap the tone you want to use.
New Text Message, New voicemail, New email: These three settings control the sounds made when receiving a text, voicemail, and email. Tapping each one brings up a similar list as the list of ringtones; however, at the top of the list is a "none" option, allowing you to have no sound for that particular notification.
Play a sound for...: Windows Phone 7 can play an audible sound or prompt for appointment reminders (discussed in a future chapter), and each keypress of the keyboard (useful feedback when learning the keyboard and wondering if a key really was pressed!). A sound can also be played for locking/unlocking the phone, as well as other notifications. These are largely personal preferences—do you want a noisy phone or a mostly silent one?
Tip
You can set a custom ringtone for a specific person by going into your People live tile, finding the person, and pressing the edit button. Then tap Ringtone, and select their custom ringer. This is great for callers who you want to have a special ring so you know if you should dash to your phone or let it go to voicemail!
Windows Phone 7 was built to support multiple languages as well as intelligent text entry. The keyboard options, found under the settings menu, and listed below (see Step 1 of "Changing the Theme"), control how the keyboard works, and how the phone handles the text you enter.
Keyboard Languages: The Windows Phone 7 keyboard can be configured to cycle through a variety of languages, showing special characters and accent symbols most used in that language. If you don't speak or write in another language often, you may want to tap Keyboard Languages and uncheck the boxes next to the languages you do not use. (See Figure 6-10—tap the check mark at the bottom of the screen to save your changes.)
Suggest text and highlight misspelled words: Windows Phone 7 will attempt to suggest text to you that it thinks you're about to type. Tapping these suggestions will insert the whole word, saving you time. However, if you don't want it to try to suggest things, or highlight what it believes are spelling mistakes, uncheck this box.
Correct misspelled words: Certain words that are commonly misspelled (especially when using an onscreen keyboard) can be corrected automatically. However, if you'd prefer not to have your phone do this, uncheck this box. For individuals in some professions (e.g., medical or technical), this may be essential to prevent "corrections" from confusing your recipients.
Insert a space after selecting a suggestion: Once you've tapped a suggested word, this option determines if the phone will automatically put a space after the word or leave your cursor next to the last letter. Some users may be more comfortable manually adding the space, while others may want to have it done automatically. Uncheck this box to insert spaces manually.
Insert a period after double-tapping the spacebar: This option will let you quickly insert a period by double-tapping the spacebar. However, if you often leave multiple blank spaces in text, this feature could become annoying and can be disabled.
Capitalize the first letter of a sentence:Windows Phone 7 will automatically capitalize the first letter after you enter a period (to denote the end of a sentence). Uncheck this box if you don't want it to do this.
Reset text suggestions:As you enter different words, Windows Phone 7 learns them and will suggest them in the future. If, for whatever reason, you want it to clear its "learned" memory and start from scratch, choose this box. Clearing text suggestions applies only to the text you've entered; the default text suggestions will still be available.
As you can see, Windows Phone 7 provides a number of customization options that can help make your phone your own. We'll learn more as we continue discussing each feature in-depth!