Friday, July 10, 2009

Three Steps To A Smarter Phone

There are smart phones (with email, Internet capability), and there are phones that are not smart --- shall we call them dumb? It’s never too late to help your dumb phone get a little smarter.

You may be able to set these features in your phone, but I suggest opting for the easy method, go to the tech desk at your local Verizon Wireless store (or the carrier of your choice), or make an appointment with a “Device Specialist” at a Verizon location, and ask to activate the features (listed below) in your cell phone. It makes a huge difference to ease of use, especially when you cannot see what’s on the screen.

1. Caller ID and Menu Readout:
announces incoming calls, menu names

2. Voice Commands: ask phone to dial contact by name, get messages, get time/date

3. Largest Font, Highest Contrast & Brightness: make screen text readable

My experience has been at Verizon, but I know you can get the same "smarts" at AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile. Go ahead, ask.

1 comment:

  1. I am with Verizon Wireless currently, and had trouble finding a phone that was accessible. When verizon came out with their first Accessible phone, the Motorola Q 9c, I got it the first month it was released, hoping to have better luck with Talks for Verizon Wireless then I had with other phones.

    After first recieving the Motorola Q9c, I had nothing but trouble with it. I couldn't do text messaging at all, the voice was very lagged and the phone itself froze on me pretty much constantly.

    7 months before my 2 year contract was up, I finally talked to verizon and I said look, I've had this crappy phone for 16 months now, can I please get a different phone? At first, they were going to send me the HTC Ozone, which is the same as the Motorola Q9c but an updated version. I didn't want to do that because most of my issues with talks for verizon had to do with the smartphone itself and not the talks software, so I said no I don't want another crappy smartphone that I would fuss with endlessly.

    my first recommendation was to switch to AT&T and get an iphone, but I still had 7 more months until my contract is up, and I am not reluctant to give up my FREE nights and weekends, plus FREE verizon to verizon, and now on top of that I have verizon's unlimited talk and text, so I defintely don't want to give that up!

    so I was like ok, which phone do I pick then?
    A friend of mine who is legally blind also, has the LG Env 3, and he likes it a great deal. He says its got talking caller ID, and speaks your text messages to you with the simple press of the space bar, so I talked to LG since verizon wireless didn't know about that feature, and LG said the LG Env Touch has those same features as the Env3, so today I ordered the LG Env Touch, which I am hoping was a good decision to make on this...

    but the Motorola Q9c and the HTC Ozone that verzion wireless sells that they say are their "accessible" phones? believe me there NOT! I've had numerous problems with Windows Mobile smartphones anyways, because there like little computers, they freeze on you all the time, when you type in a text message what takes you 2 minutes to type on the keyboard takes 35 minutes to display on the screen (very much lagged) and you have to keep rebooting the phone to get that behavior to stop, just like an old computer or something, so I'm hoping I have better luck with the LG Env series...

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