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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Motorola w205: some tips

After using Motorola w205 for some time, here I would like to share common tips which might be useful for others new w205 users:

Does it support key lock? Yes, of course. To lock the keypad, press menu button (middle button in the four-way pad) followed by * (star). If the screen becomes suddenly black, then the key locking is successful. To unlock, do the same step.

How to disable iTAP? iTAP is intelligent typing (or rather TAP-ping) technology from Motorola, used for writing text message (SMS). It's claimed to be better than T9 (text-on-nine) which is used everywhere else (Nokia, SE, Siemens, ...), but my personal experience shows that iTAP is inferior to T9.

There is no really menu item for disabling iTAP. The trick here is to switch the input method from iTAP to TAP . So iTAP means intelligent typing and TAP means non-intelligent typing. Yes, it's very confusing and not usable at all.

While you're composing an SMS, just press the menu button so that Input IME Menu shows up. There you can move from iTAP English (or German, French, etc) to TAP English (or German, French, etc). Then press the soft-button for Select. Now, word autoguessing is inactive and you can enjoy normal typing thumbing again.

If you feel like using iTAP again, just change the input method to iTAP English (or German, French, etc).

How to switch between capital and lower-case letters? This is also not obvious. When typing an SMS, suppose now the display always shows capital letters for each button that you tap. When you press 2, A will show up and it is highlighted. Right away press 0 and that A will be transformed to a. If you continue thumbing, only lower-case letters are produced. To switch to capital letters, just do it again (press a button, continue with 0 while the character is highlighted).

Why right away? Because 3 seconds after you press a button, the displayed letter will not be highlighted anymore and thus you can't change the case from lower-case to capital and vice versa.

Why 0 button? If you see carefully, there is a symbol that resembles an up-pointing arrow that button. So, it is supposed to be a shift key like in a typewriter or a keyboard.

(Picture from official Motorola w205 site)

3 comments:

Ben Lewis said...

I've also used both T9text and iTAP, and really, I've found the iTAP system to be far better, maybe it's just dictionaries (I had an LG VX3200 w/ T9, now I have a Moto KRZR K1m--Verizon's stupid CDMA be cursed!)

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your help on this subject matter. I've consulted the users manual, and still "didn't get it."

Anonymous said...

True in text messaging, but when I use the mobile web and send stuff via gmail, the iTap functions slightly differently; to write a capital letter you need to hold any key for about 1-2 seconds. Then release the key (the screen will not change and no character will be typed). The next key pressed will be an upper case / capital letter. Afterwards, all letters will again be lower case.