Dialing a Number

Number Dialing

When you first get your Android phone, there will be a Phone shortcut on the central home screen. This is really just a shortcut to the "Phone" tab inside the Contacts application. You'll probably want to replace Phone with Contacts on the home screen, because you will, like I do, call contacts you know more than punching in assorted numbers. For those customer service calls and first-time dials, though, Phone works like any 12-button touchpad. Most phones will vibrate as you tap the numbers. The bottom row contains, from left to right, a shortcut button for dialing voicemail, a green call button to make the connection (though you can also hit your phone's green call button if it has one), and a backspace/delete key to fix your mistakes.

HTC phones have their own permanent "Phone" button on every home screen, along with a very different Dialer setup:

HTC Model Phone Screen

The Sense dialer, shown above, works more like the contacts list on clamshell phones without full keyboards. Use the number keys to tap out the first few letters of a contact's name (8-4-6 for "T-I-M," for example), and their name should appear in the list above the keypad.

Pause Option for Corporate Phone Systems

If you're dialing a number that you plan on calling again, hit your phone's Menu button after you finish entering the number. You'll see a menu pop up, and "Add to contacts" will transfer the number to your contacts, as well as give you an entry form to add a name and other details. If you're dialing a corporate phone system that requires a pause before punching in a code, you can add a series of two-second pauses from this menu, or a "wait" that holds until a response is received before entering further numbers.

Receiving Calls

Your phone may buzz, blink, and beep for all kinds of messages, but it reserves a long, sustained ringtone, or a long vibration, for phone calls. When you get a call, you'll pull out your phone, and the screen will have two "sliders" near the bottom left and right of your screen, about where your thumb will be resting.

Incoming Call View

As you've probably guessed, you press near the green button and slide it right to answer the call. To "ignore" it, or send it to voicemail, press and slide the red button toward the left. The buttons may change on certain phones, but the actions and their results are the same. You can also simply lower the volume on your phone to stop the ringing or vibrating, and the caller will eventually reach your voicemail prompt. It's an important distinction, because using the red ignore button will send a caller straight to voicemail—a social etiquette lesson your author has learned too many times.

If you slide right to accept the call, you'll probably put it against your ear, and your phone will automatically turn off the screen so as not to waste battery life or accidentally let you type with your ear. If you pull the phone away from your ear, most likely to end it, you'll see an in-call options screen.

In-Call Options Screen

If your contact has uploaded a picture as a Google Talk or Gmail icon, or if you're connected on Facebook, you may see their picture when they call and on the in-progress screen, as pictured here. Otherwise, it's likely just a number and a generic Android icon.

Most of the options and labels here are self-explanatory. Hitting the button labeled Hold mutes the sound both ways, for when you need to walk around or, more likely, pull up something else on your phone. Slightly to the right of your friend's picture (or Android icon), a counter shows how long the call has run so far. The End Call button is red and centered, and it's the most frequently used button. If you've got a red button on your phone, it serves the same purpose.

Among the other options, Add Call lets you ring up another contact and bring them in for a three-way conversation. Dialpad brings up the familiar 12 keys for number entry. If you've configured a Bluetooth headset or earpiece, hitting that Bluetooth button moves the call audio to it. Mute quiets the audio from your end, not the audio from the other end. And Speaker turns on the phone's louder speakers and wider-area microphone.

The Call Log (or "Recent")

Call Log View

The tab to the right of your Phone dialer keeps track of the calls you've made, received, and missed. It's called "Call log" on standard Android phones or "Recent" on some Droid models. A green arrow indicates a call you made, a blue arrow a call received, and a red call one you missed (or chose to ignore). You can hit the green phone icon to the right of any call to quickly dial that number, or press and hold on any for some options, like editing the number, sending a text message instead, adding to your contacts, or removing just that one call from your call log. If you want to clear out all your calls and start re-building the log, hit the Menu key, then select Clear call log when it appears.

In Android 2.3, the call log is much the same, although the arrows and indicators have been shuffled around a bit, to probably better effect:

Call Log in Android 2.3

Contacts and Favorites

When you first activated your phone, you either signed into an existing Google account or created a new one. If you've used Gmail, Google Voice, Google Talk, or any other Google service to send or receive messages, you've already got a list of Google Contacts. As you make and receive calls and SMS messages on your phone, you're adding to those Google Contacts. Even if you don't care a lick about having your contacts connected to Google, it's an automatic backup service—and that's never a bad thing.

Contacts Screen

You get to your contacts by opening the Contacts shortcut from your application tray or by clicking over to the Contacts tab from the Phone shortcut. It's alphabetical by first name, and you can scroll through it with your finger to cover a few contacts at a time. As you start scrolling, you'll see a tab appear on the far right, which you can then grab with your finger and scroll much faster through the list. Even faster? Hit the Menu button and choose search, then start typing the first or last name of the person you're trying to call, text, email, or otherwise reach. If you've got a hardware keyboard, you can flip it out and start typing to get there without having to press Search.

What you see in Contacts, by default, is everybody in your "My Contacts" section of your Google Contacts. If you haven't used Google's online services that much, you pretty much see a list of everybody you've called, emailed, or sent an SMS. That can be a bit overwhelming, for sure, given Google's tenacity at remembering three other people named Pete you emailed during an apartment search five years ago.

Want to limit and edit your Contacts list? Hit the Menu key with your Contacts open, and select "Display Options."

Editing Your Contacts

The first option, "Only contacts with phones," will cut a lot of the fluff out of a meaty contact list. You'll still see your email contacts, and Facebook or Twitter friends, when you're using those applications, but your Contacts list itself will be strictly a phone list.

On Android 2.3 devices, there's a much-welcome pair of options that decide how names are shown, and how they're sorted:

Contact Viewing and Sorting in Android 2.3

Below that, you can click on your main Google/Gmail account to fine-tune both the Google Contacts that are shown, and fine-grain control which contacts from other apps are shown.

What is "System Group: My Contacts," and how did it and its other "System Group" cousins get here? They're groups from your Google Contacts. It's not an elegant system, exactly, but to make Gmail a different kind of email provider, Google semi-automated the management of contacts. Once you've sent any kind of email back and forth with somebody, they end up as a Contact. If you've traded a few emails back and forth, and Google's mathematical formula deems you to be fairly copacetic, that other person gets copied into "My Contacts." In theory, this should save you headaches. In practice, it is its own unique kind of migraine.

Almost as if to confess to its confusion, Google's Contacts on Android lets you choose which Google Contacts groups to sync, so that you can have your whole Google-y world linked up by checking each group, along with "All Other Contacts," or just sync up "My Contacts," or whatever other group you've chosen. We'll make our own syncing group in just a bit—for now, let's finish up with what we have in the "Display Options."

Syncing Twitter, Facebook, e-mail etc. with contacts

Just below your main Google account listing you'll see the syncing options for any other email accounts you've set up on your phone, along with social networks like Facebook or Twitter, and any other application where you'd build your own contact list. Click on these accounts, and you'll see an option to sync "All Contacts." Check it and you'll be able to call Facebook friends and their profile pictures with their phone numbers listed, view Twitter profiles by searching for users' real names, and otherwise augment your contact list.

Favorites/"Starred" Contacts

Most people have a small circle of friends, family, and close co-workers that they frequently call, text, email, and otherwise contact. From your Android Contacts, you can single out these frequent contacts by "Starring" them, and making them part of your Favorites group.

A "Starred" Contact

You can add that "star" by clicking on any contact name in your list, then tapping the star that appears in the upper-right corner of their contact details. As you might have guessed, you can also press and hold on a contact name to pop up an options menu, then select "Add to favorites."

Favorite Contacts List

As you do that, you'll start seeing your chosen contacts in the Favorites list. You can quickly call their default number, most likely a cellphone, by touching the green phone icon on the right-hand side or by clicking their name for other numbers and contact means. Want to change the primary calling number? Click the contact name, press and hold on the number you most frequently call, and select "Set as default."

Scroll below your list of starred/favorite contacts, and you'll see an automatically generated list of frequently called (and text-messaged) contacts. Convenient enough, but you can't, unfortunately, change this list or clear it out for a reset.

HTC's "People" App

Contacts in HTC with the "People App"

On HTC phones with the Sense UI, the integrated dialer/contacts app is replaced with an app named "People." It adds a lot more customization and social network integration, and works in a very different fashion.

Tabs at the bottom of the screen break up your views of your contacts. The left-most tab shows "All" contacts. To the right, the icon with two cards shows your "Groups," culled from your Google Contacts and habits on your phone to create Favorites and the like. The globe icon circled by rings lets you look through specific directories: those with your same email address for a "Company directory," along with contacts you know through Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, or other networks you've hooked your phone into. The right-most icon, a phone hovering over a list, is, as you probably guessed, your "Call history" listing. Click on a contact from the first three screens, or press and hold on a call log entry, and you'll see everything your HTC phone knows about them:

People App Contact Details

Everything that's in your synced Google Contacts, or found in your Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr accounts, is stashed on these pages along with any other information from apps that offer contact syncing. It's easy to launch a phone call, SMS message, email, or other communication from both the information fields and the icons at the bottom of the contact page.

But what if you know that you're friends with John Smith on Facebook, but your phone doesn't know that? You'll probably see a number on the "Link" or "Linked" icon in the upper-right corner. Press that icon to make the connection.

Linking Contacts in HTC People App

You'll see here how you're linked to a particular contact in the top half. If there's a connection to a social network or email address that your phone's not quite sure of—maybe the name is close but not dead-on—you'll be offered a quick Link button to press. In the bottom half of the screen, you can manually add them from the contact options at the bottom. This comes in handy when, for instance, you're friends with a guy named Steve Jones, but HTC doesn't know that Steve also goes by the name DJ S-Town Steady Droppin' Science on his Facebook profile.

Managing Contacts on Your Phone (and On the Web)

You might call, email, and send SMS messages to a person through your Android phone, and that might create two different phone number entries, along with one or more email addresses. If you're not using Gmail or other Google services, those numbers also lack for recognizable names. Press and hold on any contact, select Edit Contact, and let's make your phone a lot more convenient.

Add emails, postal addresses, IMs, etc. to one contact name

If you're friends with a contact on Facebook, or they've filled out their Google Talk or Gmail profiles with a picture, you'll see it in their contact listing. Otherwise, you can click the "+" icon inside the gray, empty-looking box, then pick and crop a photo from your Gallery to represent them if you'd like (and we will, I promise, cover the Gallery and photo uploading in another chapter).

Below that, you'll see a series of fields you can fill out or add to. Click the green "+" next to any of the fields offered to add them: Phone, Email, IM, Postal Address, and more. You can fill out this information if you've got it locked in memory, but there's an easier way to fill out your contacts using a full computer mouse and keyboard for speed and convenience. More on that in just a bit.

Back at the individual contact screen, there are three other options available when hitting the Menu button: To "Share" a contact, usually through a Gmail/email message or, if you have it installed, creating a barcode with the Barcode Scanner app. There's an option to Delete a contact, and an Options box (see the "Setting Unique Ringtones" box).

Some Unique Ringtone Options

Setting Unique Ringtones and Sending to Voicemail Let's say you've got certain folks, perhaps co-workers who always seem to call while you're out at dinner, who deserve their own "special" ringtone, or who should always go directly to voicemail. Select their contact name from your main Contacts list, hit the Menu key, then press the Options button. You'll see two options: a pop-out menu to select a particular ringtone for when this contact calls, and a check box to make all their calls go directly to your voicemail. If the boss asks why, just say your battery was dead from checking in on work email so often.

As you can see, you could spend a whole lot of time messing with your contacts and getting them just so on your phone screen. The smarter move, though, is to import, manage, and fine-tune your contacts through Google's own Contacts site.

Managing Your Contacts on Google Contacts

Google Contacts

Head to google.com/contacts and log in with the same Google/Gmail account you set up on your phone, if you're not already logged in. If you've been using Gmail or any other Google service that relies on sending emails, or setting up contacts on your phone for some time, you'll see a number of contacts already filled in. As noted previously, Google tries to automatically create a frequently accessed group of "My Contacts" from your "All Contacts" group, with some success and a few headaches. It also creates groups for Friends, Family, and Co-workers that you can't get rid of, and after setting up an Android phone, a "Starred in Android" sub-group shows up.

Edit your contacts through Google Contacts on the web

The grouping isn't perfect, but it's a lot easier to edit your contacts on this web page than from your phone's screen. Search out a name or select it from a list, and you can move that person in and out of groups—including your "Starred in Android" group, which will actually edit your "Favorites" list on your phone. Google Contacts can also merge duplicate contacts, which commonly occur when you've emailed and called a person, but never assigned a common name to those two details. At Lifehacker, I've previously written a complete guide to fixing Google Contacts that dives into the more advanced features as well as third-party fixes that make setting up your Contacts less painful. The nicest thing is that once you've put in the work to set up your contacts for your phone, they're always available to you on the web, in your Gmail inbox, and everywhere else in the Google-verse.

Adding Contacts to Your Home Screen

Add Frequently Used Contacts to your Home Screen

You have, most likely, a small circle of people you call, text, email, Facebook message, Twitter at, and visit much more frequently than anybody else. Android lets you add those most-contacted contacts directly to your home screens, and get a pop-out menu to reach out to them quickly. Press and hold down on an empty space on your home screen, then choose "Shortcuts" from the menu that pops out. Choose "Contacts" in the next menu, then select the person you want to have on your home screen (HTC owners, look for "People" instead of "Contacts"). Their picture, if available, will show up just above their name, and pressing on their icon provides a menu of options, pictured here. The basics are a blue phone icon to call their default phone (which you can set on their contact page), a contact card to see all their details, a Voice or SMS-type icon to send a text message, an email icon, a Maps link if you've entered their address, and other options you can access by sliding the panel of options toward the left. You'll also see their latest updates to their Facebook, Twitter, or other accounts, if you have those synced on your phone.

But maybe you don't need all your possible contact options for a certain person—they're somebody you just call, or just send SMS to. Press and hold on your home screen, select "Shortcuts," then pick "Direct dial" or "Direct message" to add a shortcut that calls or text messages that contact, respectively.

Want to keep a whole set of contacts handy on your home screen? Press and hold on your home screen, select "Folders" from the menu, then peep at the options that come up. You can add a folder that actually shows a pop-up list of "All contacts" (not helpful at all, unless your list is very short), a "Contacts with phone numbers" folder to pare down the list (somewhat more helpful, but still just a list), a "Facebook Phonebook" to reach out to your extended social circle, and the much more useful folder of "Starred contacts," which is still a list, but a very selective one at that.

The call experience will vary from phone to phone based on the hardware you're holding, but those are the basics of making calls and managing contacts on a modern Android phone. Now let's get to the fun stuff you really bought your phone for.

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