Ten T-Mobile G1 Tips and Tricks
September 26th, 2008 by Todd Haselton 
Product manuals are lame. The last thing we ever want to do when we purchase a fresh new gadget is sit there reading through a manual. Instead, we love to dive right into the gadgetry and start playing with our new toys. So we went through the T-Mobile G1’s horribly boring 48 page user manual to find 10 useful tips that you’ll really want to know.
1. Dial by Voice
The G1 supports voice dialing, and you can easily call a friend by stating their name if you press and hold the Send key on the G1. Bonus Tip: If you want to add in another caller while you’re on the phone, press the Send key while in a call.
2. Use an mp3 as your Ringtone
We’re not big fans of people using mp3s as ringtones, since the music selection is often pretty awful. Nonetheless, we’ll tell you how with the G1. Open Music > Songs > and hold your finger on your song of choice. Next, select “Use as phone ringtone.”
Read on for more.
3. Access the Applications Menu from Anywhere
If you’re surfing the Web and want to quickly bring up your music player to switch songs, you can quickly do this by holding down the Home button on the G1. This will quickly bring up your Applications menu. If you want to go directly to the desktop, just press the Home button once.
4. Turn on Wi-Fi
Phones don’t just automatically have Wi-Fi capabilities turned on. To do this, press the Menu key while you’re on the home screen.
Next, click Settings > Wireless Controls and select Wi-Fi
Open Wi-Fi settings to force the G1 to search for available networks.
5. Place your phone in silent mode on the fly
You just walked into a movie theater a few minutes late, and you want to quickly put the phone in silent mode without browsing through menus to do so. Avoid this by toggling silent mode without opening the G1. Simply press and hold the End key to put the phone in silent mode.
6. Add songs to a playlist
When you’re playing co-pilot on a long road trip, the music selection is up to you. Make the song selection smoother by creating a playlist ahead of time. On the G1, open up Music > Songs, and then touch and hold any song that you want to add to a playlist. A menu will pop up, and you’ll want to select Add to playlist.
7. Install a microSD card
You can install a microSD card for adding more storage or using your phone as a portable hard drive (see tip 9), and here’s how. First open the keyboard. Next, look for a small memory card cover below the Send key on the G1. Take your microSD card and slide it forward with the gold teeth facing down.
8. Typing Tips
Insert special character: Press ALT + Spacebar
Delete entire line of text: Press ALT + Delete
Turn on all caps: Press Shift Twice
Move cursor to end or beginning of text: Press Alt while scrolling Trackball
Insert a Tab space: Press Alt + Q
Highlight text: Press Shift and roll Trackball
9. Use your phone as a portable hard drive
The G1 supports high capacity microSD cards, which means you can add up to 16GB of storage to it. That’s as good as carrying a portable hard drive around with you. To treat your G1 as a portable storage device, you need to turn on mass storage.
Plug your G1 into your computer using a USB cable. Navigate to the home screen and select Menu > Settings > SD card & phone storage. Next, select Use for USB storage. Now a folder will pop up on your computer, and you can drag and drop music, videos, or any file of your choice onto the phone.
10. Cut, Copy, and Paste Text
Copying, cutting, and pasting text from Web sites or documents is easy with the G1.
To Cut, press Menu and x.
To Copy, press Menu and c
To Paste, press Menu and v.
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39 Responses to “Ten T-Mobile G1 Tips and Tricks”
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October 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 am
10 basic tricks… Perfect…
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
10 basic tricks…. Easy hands on steps. (Amazing…Need 10 More!)
October 25th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
i need help on how to delete ringtones off of the g1 because it seems like there is no way possible
October 26th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
How do you delete ringtones, because it doesn’t let me? Can u show me how. Thanks
October 28th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Oh Ringdroid should help you with your ringtone issues. http://code.google.com/p/ringdroid/
Also here are some more android tips, if you are interested. http://android-tips.com
November 1st, 2008 at 9:27 pm
After a week with the G1, I am still having problems checking messages and basically getting it to function. Thank heavens for G1 Tips and Tricks!!
November 5th, 2008 at 12:50 am
does anyone know how to delete a winglet form the main screen ?
Grace
November 7th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Put your finger on the widget holding your finer on it slide it towards the top of the screen
November 29th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
does anyone know how to change the missed call time setting like missed call 5 hours ago to actual time when call was made.
January 8th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Not sure if you can do it with the existing call log, but there’s a free app called Exact Call Log that shows exact times and lets you organize calls by incoming, outgoing and missed if you want.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
To delete a song on the g1 all you have to do is press the menu button and press delete its so simple. To delete something off the main screen u press and hold it then bring it down to the little trash can…! U people are idiots seriously its called a manual!!
January 25th, 2009 at 3:10 am
Umh miss brianna we need to know how to delete ringtones after downloading them. And its called its not in the manual!
January 27th, 2009 at 9:44 am
How do you delete one single call off of the call log on the G1?
January 31st, 2009 at 6:19 am
how can i forward a text or pic with this phone
February 16th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
to forward a text just go to the text message you want to send hold finger on it and you get the option to FORWARD spent most of today trying to find that out
February 17th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
HOW CAN I GET TIP 9 TO WORK ON MY PHONE
March 24th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
To get TIP #9 working on your phone (Use your phone as a portable hard drive):
Use the USB cable that came with your G1 to connect your G1 to your computer. The computer will recognize the G1 as a new USB drive, but it will tell you “Please insert a disk into drive X: ( where X: is the identity of the new USB drive on your computer). This is the computer’s way of telling you the USB drive is not mounted. To mount the USB drive on your computer, slide the notification pane at the top of your G1’s screen down, and select the item named ‘USB Connected’ then choose ‘Mount’ from the popup options. Now you will be able to open the X: drive on your computer and move files into the music, dcim or albumthumbs folders.
Now the secrets of the universe have been entrusted to you. Use your new powers wisely, young Jedi.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:23 pm
HOW DO U DELETE RINGERS OFF OF THIS PHONE NUTHING WORKS AT ALL. ITS ODD AND CONFUSING
March 31st, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Y CANT U DELETE RINGERS WHEN U CAN DELETE EVERYTHING ELSE
April 5th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Ho do I delete movies off the sd card with out having to go to a computer?
April 18th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Missing from the “typing tips”; For texting, shift then enter to insert a newline/linefeed, handy for multiline texts. Just hitting actually enter sends the message while on many other phones (sidekick) it inserts a newline.
April 25th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
how do you make put ringtones” for the message alert!!!
May 10th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Hmmm… so the idea of having an on screen keyboard, seemed more important than a decent file explorer. I am one of the many that used Myxer.com to download ringtones. Shame on these companies for not allowing us to delete our ringtones. I think that would be a fundamental OS user option. Unbelievable.
May 17th, 2009 at 12:18 am
CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO DELETE A RINGTONE ONCE UVE ALREADY DOWNLOADED IT FROM MYMYXER.COM
June 6th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
You have. To do a factory reset..
June 10th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
I have had my G1 for a little over a day now and I cant get over how awesome it is, it even has a metal detector app; how the heck did they do that?
June 16th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
im just wondering how you do tip number 1
i dont quite understand how to do this one and i would read my manual except the shop didnt give me one with my box! :@
June 26th, 2009 at 11:40 am
i am asking this question for my uncle because he just got his G1 phone and wants to know how he can get a notification on the screen when someone is calling him while he is texting? email me at proud_and_single_momof3_2009@yahoo.com
June 28th, 2009 at 1:51 am
How can I get t9 texting on the touchscreen wiithout buying and downloading better keyboard?
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:38 am
does anyone know how to delete items from the SD card?
July 20th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
how i do to watch videos on the web sites is any flash player available or i have to wait for any update
July 24th, 2009 at 2:56 am
Zack asked:
does anyone know how to delete items from the SD card?
Yes.
Use the USB cable that came with your G1 to connect your G1 to your computer. The computer will recognize the G1 as a new USB drive, but it will tell you “Please insert a disk into drive X: ( where X: is the identity of the new USB drive on your computer). This is the computer’s way of telling you the USB drive is not mounted. To mount the USB drive on your computer, slide the notification pane at the top of your G1’s screen down, and select the item named ‘USB Connected’ then choose ‘Mount’ from the popup options. Now you will be able to open the X: drive on your computer and delete files.
August 7th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
So no one knows how to delete these stupid unwanted ringtones that is downloaded..I refuse to belive that we are stuck with these ringtones that take up so much space..
October 12th, 2009 at 2:19 am
does ANYBODY know how to delete ringtones on a g1. i downloaded off myxer. i even called tmobile n they dnt have a clue. i mean where does the files even go to.all this stuff on this phone and u cant even delete a ringtone?? gotta do better than that.
October 15th, 2009 at 3:50 am
To Delete Ringtones and items from your SD Card or G1, simply go to the ringtone you don’t want. (Should be in your music folder) and hold your finger down on it. Options will come up that say use as phone ringtone,play,etc. Delete is in that same options menu. Do the same with your SD Card. Go to the item you don’t want and hold your finger over it. Press delete and it’s gone. I also found that a quicker way on some things is to hover over it using the trackball and pressing the delete key. =)
G1 made simple
November 4th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
@Ego, that does not work. When you go to music ringtones do not come up.
November 29th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Sorry about that guys, I could not delete the ringtones from the sound and display menu in Settings. I used music media and set them as my ringtones. I also could not delete actual downloaded/Proloaded G1 Mobile Ringtones.
December 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Two things: first, how do i simply turn OFF music after I have played it. Second: Why can’t I send out pictures on a mms?? None of them go through….
December 21st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
can u set the music u download off computer as a ringtone for individual contacts