Introduction

A year or so ago my son, during a brief lapse of vigilance on my part, used my Nokia 3390 as a race car, cracking the delicate LCD screen. The 3390 is a good phone, with practical features and a solid interface, and I had become familiar with its use right away. At first, the crack was small and easy to work around; in fact, I was amazed by how few letters were actually necessary to operate the phone. But the crack slowly leaked blue die until what little real estate was still visible faded beyond legibility.

My friends and coworkers laughed at my expense everytime I tried to use the phone. And after I had endured such a clearly unfit device for so long, they laughed again when I broke down and actually purchased a new Motorla T720 at the beginning of this year.

What I Got

The T720 is a nice phone by most measures (though a surprising number of people were quick to point out that it doesn't include a camera). It's a classic Motorola flip phone – stylish despite the fact that its essential physical hallmarks have not changed in a decade. It has an ample color LCD screen, built-in calendar, customizable polyphonic ringtones and a host of other gadgety features, including a Java virtual machine to run them all.

Personally, I can do without most modern cell phone features. I need a phonebook, of course, and it's nice that I can change the way that my phone sounds so that I have a chance of distinguishing its ring from the dozen or so other phones likely to be nearby at any given moment. Nevertheless, I have become attached to 1-touch dialing, which is a feature that allows you to dial an entire phone number by pressing and holding a single key; this is clearly a win for dialing your most common numbers.

The Swap Algorithm

Unfortunately, nowhere in the T720's "iconic user-interface" is there a tool for assigning phone numbers or phonebook entries to 1-touch keys. The manual cryptically mentions that 1-touch keys are automatically assigned to the first nine entries in your phonebook. But my phonebook, like most others I've seen, is sorted alphabetically; certainly 1-touch dialing isn't limited to people and places whose names begin with the letter "A", is it?

The answer to that question is, of course: "Of course not." Each phonebook entry is assigned a unique integer labeled "Speed No." Entries are numbered starting with 501 if you use, as I do, a SIM card. The so-called "first" entry in your phonebook is the one numbered 501; it will be dialed if you press and hold the 1 key. Clearly you can assign 1-touch dialing keys to phonebook entries by setting their Speed Nos. That would be simple enough, I suppose, but here's the catch: The 1-touch keys I had configured for the 3390 did not transfer to the T720; instead they were assigned seemingly at random to entries that I don't care about dialing quickly, let alone with one hand.

To make use of what is ostensibly a commodity feature, you must do what software could have done for you:

  1. Find the phonebook entry currently assigned to the 1-touch key you want to use. Doing so is relatively easy, just press and hold the 1-touch key; but be sure to hang up before someone answers – you don't want them to know that you are demoting their phone number.
  2. Assign the above entry a new Speed No. You need to pick a number that's not currently in use. Theoretically, 501 plus the number of entries in your phonebook will work. I used 599.
  3. Assign the freed Speed No. to the entry you want to dial using the 1-touch key.
  4. Repeat for each phone number you want to dial with one touch.

Conclusion

I know what you're thinking: I probably could have learned how to use voice activated dialing rather than whining about a feature it looks like Motorola is about to phase out anyway. But here's a principle, taken from Unix, that I think applies here: Do one thing, do it well. In other words, before you expend the effort to let me play games on my phone, set its wallpaper or inspect the heap size of its Java virtual machine, make dialing the phone and organizing its phonebook as effortless as possible.