How to Enable Vanity Dialing in Windows Mobile 6.1 BackJack II

One of the annoyances with “smart” phones these days is the inability to dial “Vanity” numbers – these are numbers like 1-800-FLOWERS. On a traditional phone, ABC map to the 2 key, DEF map to the 3 key…
Modern smartphones with QWERTY keyboards lke Blaackberries, Blackjacks, etc., typipcally don’t have a dedicated dialing pad with these mappings. On my BlackJack II, for instance, E is under the 1 key, R is under the 2 key and T is under the 3 key.

To dial 1-800-FLOWERS you need to be able to remember what all the crazy mappings are or have one in front of you to cheat. Now in Windows Mobile 6.1 Microsoft has added “Vanity Dialing” Turn it on, and you can dial with actual letters from your QWERTY keyboard. Here’s how to enable it:

From your Home screen press Start > Then Settings.
Make your way to the Key Settings sub menu
Choose Vanity Dialing
Turn Vanity Dialing On and Press Done.
You’ll see a message about Rebooting your phone. Press OK and Go ahead and do it. Press the Power Button and choose Power off.
Power the phone on again.

Now press the Dial Key.
You should see 123# in the top right corner of your screen to let you know that Vanity Dialing is enabled.

To dial 1800-FLOWERS , press 1-800 as you normally would, then press the SHIFT key once. You should see the 123# change to ABC. Now type FLOWERS. Then press the dial button. The numbers should automagically be translated to the traditional letter mappings. If you need to switch back to numeric dialing, you can press SHIFT again to disable the feature.

Good luck, and happy dialing.