Vibrating Profiles & Missed Calls

As a long time Smartphone user, I'm really excited about the quality of Windows Mobile 5.0 and most of the feature changes that have happened over the years.  But I'll be honest and say that I personally find a couple of the changes we had to make a bit... frustrating.  This particular one bit me again today when I missed a call so I decided to post about it now rather than wait for it to come up in the newsgroups after 5.0 devices ship.

In Smartphone 2002 and 2003 we have profiles for "Normal", "Silent", "Meeting", "Automatic", and a few others.  When  you get a call in Normal, the phone rings. When you get a call in Silent, the phone vibrates.  Meeting is essentially the same as Silent.   When you're in Automatic, the device will switch between "Meeting" and "Normal" based on whether Outlook thinks you're busy.  Cool.

For 5.0, the behavior of Silent was changed so that it is more conservative and completely silent... in other words, Silent no longer vibrates and causes a commotion when the device is sitting on table.  If you want to have the phone vibrate when a call comes in, you're now supposed to pick the Meeting profile instead.

Research done by the Shell team (yes, we actually do a ton of user research on these things) showed that this new behavior for Silent is what most users expect and matches up closer to the behavior on other platforms.  They're probably right and this will be more intuitive for folks that are new to Smartphone.  But if you're a long time Smartphone user like me and keep forgetting to use Meeting instead of Silent (thus missing incomming calls), my suggestion is to go in to Setting-->Profiles and either rename the Meeting profile to "Vibrate" or just change the Ring Type setting on the Silent profile to "Vibrate".

-Robert

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2005
  I gotta agree with the user testing. Silent should be silent.

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2005
  Hello. I don't know if this is the right place to make this question:
  
  Windows Mobile 5 will support natively directdraw UI?
  
  I mean actual VGA, accelerated devices now suffering from flickering while opening menus...

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2005
  Yes, Windows Mobile 5.0 adds support for DirectDraw and Direct3D. Check out that 5.0 SDK for details and samples.

• Anonymous
  July 30, 2005
  This is a hardware questions versus software. I was wondering if the MS Windows Mobile Team can write an article to discuss which WM5.0 hardware you'd recommend people to purchase or think about. There will be a tons of choices coming out very soon, but what are your experiences so far? What stuff should we watch out for or avoid? Since you guys have a great deal of experience with hardware as well, i'm assuming.

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2005
  Last week was pretty busy for me; I had a lot to get done before I left for vacation (“blogging on your...

• Anonymous
  August 02, 2005
  Silent might be silent in assorted platforms, but I don't understand the point of a phone that gives absolutely no indication that an event has happenned, phone call or otherwise. Might as well be off. I suppose you could place the phone where you can see the screen, because I assume it still lights up when something happens in 'silent', but that seems awkward.
  
  With a new phone I typically check the profiles to see what they do. In silent, I turn the vibrate on. If I don't want to be disturbed at all, the phone goes off.

• Anonymous
  August 02, 2005
  Maybe you have a point if you are a long term user - I can tell you that the first thing I did on my MPX220 was to change Silent to be just that - SILENT.
  
  It doesn't vibrate or do anything so the Research is spot on IMHO.

• Anonymous
  August 02, 2005
  Makes perfect sense to me. Meeting is one beep or vibrate, Silent is nothing. In regards to the comments about just turning the phone off, what if you need to reference some data on your phone? Do you really want to wait for the phone to boot up and afterwards are you going to turn it off again and turn it on again if you need more info? Silent as a no-notification mode has its purpose if you don't want to be disturbed at all but still want your smartphone on so that you can reference data when you wish.

• Anonymous
  August 02, 2005
  Makes perfect sense to me. Meeting is one beep or vibrate, Silent is nothing. In regards to the comments about just turning the phone off, what if you need to reference some data on your phone? Do you really want to wait for the phone to boot up and afterwards are you going to turn it off again and turn it on again if you need more info? Silent as a no-notification mode has its purpose if you don't want to be disturbed at all but still want your smartphone on so that you can reference data when you wish.

• Anonymous
  August 06, 2005
  Meeting mode should be called Vibrate by default... would make it's underlying settings much clearer. Definitely not intuitive as is.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2005
  Can anyone give me guidance on how to write an application on how to switch between these profiles automatically?

• Anonymous
  November 02, 2005
  Hi - do you know that the Automatic profile seems to have stopped working correctly for WM5.0 devices running AKU 1.1.1 ? If a meeting comes up, the device stays in Normal profile. If you enter into the meeting appointment that's taking place and change some aspect of the meeting (e.g. Sensitivity) and then come back out of the appointment, then the deivce will enter into meeting mode.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  I can't believe that WM5 didn't implement the feature from Smartphone that decides if you are busy or not based on your calendar. My smartphone used to just go silent when it was on "Automatic" mode to detect meetings in my calendar. I didn't have to risk being "that guy" in a meeting whose phone started ringing. I hope MS brings this feature into WM5 soon.

• Anonymous
  December 18, 2005
  I'd like to have a hotkey that will allow me turn the phone to meeting profile for a preset time, then back to normal. Sort of like the automatic profile, but without using the calendar to switch between meeting and normal. I don't always know when I'll be called into a meeting, and I don't always remember to switch my phone to meeting profile then back again to normal, so a hotkey would make it so I don't forget and leave it on meeting for hours or days by accident.

• Anonymous
  December 22, 2005
  I have just bought a WM5 XDA Mini S (like the HTC Wizard) and there are no profiles at all. Should I have them in Settings, or is this a deliberate omission, in which case, it's a major pain having no option for meeting or night, etc.
  Thanks

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2006
  I'd just like to confirm Neil's comment. I use the Automatic mode, but it won't switch into "Silent" or "Meeting" automatically unless I go into the calendar item and edit it one the meeting has begun. This kind of defeats the purpose of Automatic mode. Any chance a fix is in the works?
  

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2006
  Please see this URL for a WM5 plug-in which appears to do what you want:
  
  http://ukaywares.blogspot.com/2006/02/phone-profiles.html

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2006
  thanks robert - that's exactly what I was after.

• Anonymous
  April 04, 2006
  Hi Mark,
  
  Thanks for the program  that can set the profile.I would want to know the APIs to read phone profile(i.e. silent , vibration mode, ring tone volumes) in non-smart phone.In smartphone we can query from registry notification mechanism.I need to implement this and need access to APIs.

• Anonymous
  April 04, 2006
  Hi,
  
  I would want to know the APIs in WM5.0 which can read device profile (i..e silent), vibrate mode, ring tone volume in non-smart phone.I need to embed the same in my application and so it would be great if i could get access to these APIs.

• Anonymous
  April 30, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 06, 2006
  For some reason the profile doesn't seem to be switching to meeting when using Outlook 2007 (beta2), even if the time is set as "busy".
  
  I suppose this could just be a beta issue?

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  I recently purchased the 02 XDA IQ and was suprised to find that it's not possible to set Ring & Vibrate like most modern mobile phones.
  
  

• Anonymous
  August 07, 2006
  Is there going to be the ability in WM5 that you can have multiple vibrating options?  One for email, one for text, etc.  Or is this a device specific issue?

• Anonymous
  January 05, 2007
  Silent should be silent...problem here is that the other notifications (reminders, e-mail arriving, etc.) there is NO option for SILENT.   The only thing that is silent is inbound calls.  Don't know about you, but I get more e-mail than inbound calls and my phone rattling around on the table is annoying. EVERYTHING should be silent in the silent profile... my 2-cents... -Scott

• Anonymous
  January 05, 2007
  I will use BlackBerry or stay with Treo if there is no RING+VIB modes, I probably answer 80% of my "Pocket" calls because of vibe or when I am in the car.  Loud ring just is not loud enough, and VIB only doesn't always get your attention when on the other side of the house! Please tell me how/when RING+VIB (adjustable ring volume would be best w/ vib option add-on)! Thank you. -- Scott Stevens 970.274.3070 Mobile "wirelesscott" AIM/MSN/YAH Website http://scottstevens.net It's more than just opinion - http://bluntperspectives.com

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2007
  Scott, smartphones have a ton of different ring types, including "Vibrate and Ring" and "Vibrate then Ring."  Start->Settings->Profiles  Select the profile you want to set this for and choose menu->edit.  Under "Ring Type" set the type you want. Unfortunately, this feature doesn't exist on PocketPCs. Mike

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2007
  I have a 8525, I can't find where to change the profile settings, can anyone help me?

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2007
  Never mind..I saw the previous post on pocketpcs

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2007
  How do we get/set the phone profile in the previous versions like the smartphone2003 SE edition compact framework 1.0 In other words, if how do i know if the phone is in Silent/Vibrate mode?

• Anonymous
  March 19, 2007
  > When you're in Automatic, the device will > switch between "Meeting" and "Normal" based > on whether Outlook thinks you're busy. Outlook thinks I am busy, when I have an appointment in my calendar marked as "busy".  Outlook does not think I am busy, when I have an appointment in my calendar marked as "out of office" (such as a meeting at the customer's site...) I think it should not depend on the free/busy information in Outlook, but there should be a new flag in Outlook (e.g. simply called "meeting").  The flag could be switched on by default if I set the busy flag, but I should be able to set it independently. Kind regards, Willi

• Anonymous
  April 18, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 08, 2007
  I’ve T-Mobile MDA running on Windows Mobile 5. Is it possible or do we have some utility to change profile depending upon time and day. e.g. during work hours phone should go in vibrating(except weekend) mode and rest of the time in ringer mode

• Anonymous
  September 21, 2007
  Hi All, I'm a WinCE developer. There is one query regarding phone's ringing mode. I wnat to know how to get phone's ringing mode? Is there any API to know the ringing mode of a phone. I have also gone through the registry entries but the registry entry for ringing mode differs from one phone to another. So this is not generic way to get the ringing mode. I want it to be coming from any Windows API. Please let me know if someone know the answer. Thanks in advance. Zubair Ahmed