Email may rule the land while you sit at your desk, but text messaging is a universal mobile-communication method—all phones have text messages, which means you can use them to communicate with your not-so-tech-savvy friends who still use basic phones. Windows Phone 7 makes it easy to send, receive, and read text messages, as we'll explain in this chapter.
Windows Phone 7 offers two basic ways to send a text message:
Messaging Live Tile—Tap the Messaging live tile on your Start screen, then tap the New button at the bottom of the screen (see Figure 13-1).
People Live Tile—Tap the People live tile on your Start screen, then choose the person you wish to text. Tap text mobile to start a new message (see Figure 13-2).
You can do more than send text messages: you can also spice things up by sending pictures. You can send a message to one person, or to multiple people. In this example I'll send the same message to two people, I'll also attach a photo and send it to them as well.
However, I could have simply selected one of them. Windows Phone 7 groups messages into conversations, which means that as I send messages in this conversation, both recipients will get them. If I want to send something to only one of the recipients, I can simply create a new message as previously discussed. In this next example I'll send the same message to multiple people.
If you started from the Messaging tile, you'll need to add the name of the person you'd like to text. If you started from the People tile, it will already be entered (although you can follow this step to add another). To add a recipient, tap the Add button in the upper right and choose a contact (see Figure 13-3).
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If you know the name of the person, you can also tap the To: box and type it in directly. Windows Phone 7 will pull a list of possible people as you type and let you select the person's number. If you want to go "old school" and enter the number directly, you can do that, as well!
Enter the text you want to send, and tap the Send button (see Figure 13-4).
You can send a photo to both people in the message conversation. To do so, attach a photo, click the Attach button, and either choose an existing picture or take a new picture by tapping the Camera button at the bottom of the screen (see Figure 13-5).
Once the picture is attached, you can type your message and tap Send. If you want to remove the picture, tap the Remove button (see Figure 13-6). If you had wanted to, you could also have typed part of the message and then attached the photo (and even typed more text after that)!
Windows Phone 7 keeps track of your on-going text message conversations, grouping your sent texts and responses together so you can easily follow the individual chains of thought. The preceding conversation is shown in Figure 13-7.
The night after your epic breakup with your girlfriend is probably not the time you want to see happy conversations with her from three weeks ago! Thankfully, you can delete specific conversations by tapping and holding the conversation, and then choosing Delete from the menu that pops up!
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You can also delete a conversation from within a conversation—just tap the Ellipsis button and choose delete conversation—this will take you back to your Conversations or Start screen.
There aren't many text messaging settings you can change, but there are two you can change. On the Conversations screen, tap the Ellipsis button and choose Settings. A screen similar to the one shown in Figure 13-8 will appear. From here, you can turn on SMS delivery confirmation. (This tells your cell phone provider's network to send you a text message when your recipient has received your original message; this is helpful in situations where you have limited coverage and you want to be sure a message was received). You can also change the SMS center number; however, you'll want to check with your provider first to ensure you don't change it incorrectly and lose the ability to send or receive text messages. In general, changing the SMS center number without being told to by your cellular provider is a very bad idea!
Text messaging is not as sophisticated as email, but it is an important tool when communicating with others on smartphones or regular cell phones. It can also be used to access services or send verification codes (e.g., in mobile banking). Your Windows Phone 7 device will not only let you send and receive messages, but it will also help you keep them organized. The ability to use pictures to organize conversations (and other files) will also make it more interesting to use!