How to dial alphanumeric phone numbers on your Samsung Blackjack

The Samsung Blackjack uses a QWERTY key board that is great for writing emails and typing text in general, however when it comes to dialing an alpha numeric phone number it can be tricky. Say you want to dial 1-800-Flowers, the problem is that the number keys on the blackjack are not tied to the same letters as on a standard phone.

The easiest way around this I have found so far is a hack that displays a new logo at the top of the dialing screen.
This logo shows you which numbers map to a particular letter on the regular phone. Since it gets displayed every time you go to the dialing screen it is easy to use this to figure out which numbers to dial.

This is a an easy change to make to your phone. Here is how you set up this hack.

First connect your Samsung Blackjack to a computer via the USB cable. If everything is configured correctly the following Microsoft Active Sync screen should show up on your computer.



Click on Explore and then "My Windows Mobile-Based Device" and then Windows. You should see a file in there named "ms_mobile_oem.gif".


Save a copy of the image below and name it "ms_mobile_oem.gif". Copy this over the image in your Blackjack's windows folder thus overwriting it.



After this you may need to restart your Blackjack to see the new image. Once you have done this every time you go to the dial screen you will see that new logo at the top of the screen and have a handy way of remembering which numbers to dial for an alphanumeric number.

By the way this issue is not unique to the Samsung Blackjack. Most windows mobile smart phones with QWERTY keyboards have the same issue. Here is a discussion about the issue: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2007/02/06/how-do-you-dial-1-800-flowers.aspx