{"id":8505,"date":"2016-08-18T00:01:46","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T07:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=8505"},"modified":"2016-08-13T12:21:27","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T19:21:27","slug":"android-contact-tricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=8505","title":{"rendered":"Android Contact Tricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I generally don’t use the Contacts app on my Android devices. Instead, I use the “goal” app, such as Phone or Gmail or Messages. Still, I occasionally wander into the Contacts app where I discover something surprising.
\n
\nFirst, and this isn’t a Contacts app trick, but you can quickly search your phone’s contact list from within the Phone app. I’ve been using this trick for a while: Instead of looking up the contact, start typing their name on the dialpad.<\/p>\n

For example, if you’re phoning up Obama, type his first name: 2 for B, 2, for A, 7 for R, and eventually you’ll see Barack Obama<\/strong> in the list of found contacts, similar to what’s shown in Figure 1.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 1. “Dialing” a contact’s name on the Phone app’s dialpad.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tap the matching contact from the list to quickly dial that number.<\/p>\n

In the Contacts app, you can use an entry in the list to quickly dial or text. This trick may not work on all Android phones, but it definitely works on Samsung phones: Swipe the contact’s entry to the right to call them; swipe the entry to the left to send a text message. Figure 2 illustrates this technique.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 2. Swipe contacts in the Samsung Contacts app to quickly dial or text.<\/p><\/div>\n

If the contact has multiple numbers, you’re asked to choose a default. After doing so, swipe the contact’s entry in the address book list (refer to Figure 2) and you can quickly summon the Phone or Messages app to call or text that person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Phone and Contacts apps are more versatile than you might suspect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-8505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-android"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8505"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8514,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8505\/revisions\/8514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}