Once you start giving out your phone number, chances are, people are going to call you. To answer your phone when it rings, open the phone and press the Send button once. You can also press the left Soft Key toacceptthe call (shown in Figure 3-3), or the right Soft Key torejectthe call and immediately send it to voice mail.
If you accept the call, put the phone up to your ear and enjoy your conversation. To end the call, press End.
From the Settings menu of your Smartphone, you can program the phone to automatically answer the incoming call when the phone is opened (eliminating the need to press Send or Accept to answer the call).
To customize your Smartphone in terms of how it handles incoming calls, access the Smartphone’s Settings submenu (press Start from the Welcome/Start screen and then scroll down to Settings), and choose the Phone submenu. From this Phone Settings menu (on the MPx200, for example), you can adjust the following features:
■ Call Barring You can program your phone to block incoming calls by choosing specific numbers you wish to block or block all calls. When you’re roaming, for example, you can choose to block all incoming calls to avoid extra charges. These incoming calls will go directly to voice mail.
FIGURE 3-2 All Smartphones have a signal strength indicator in the upper-right corner of the screen. It’s located next to the battery strength indicator.
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■ Call Forwarding If you don’t answer an incoming call, you can program your Smartphone to automatically send that call to voice mail or forward it to another phone number, which you preprogram into your phone. For example, you can choose to forward calls only if you’re already speaking with someone else, or you can forward calls you simply don’t answer. Both AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless offer this feature. When activated, your wireless phone will not ring until you deactivate the feature. When forwarding calls to phone numbers outside your local calling area, you’ll be billed for any toll, long distance, and airtime charges incurred. Additional per-minute charges may apply to all forwarded calls.
Some services allow you to use call forwarding without programming your phone or customizing the phone’s settings. If you’re an AT&T customer, for example, to activate call forwarding, press *71, followed by 1 plus the area code and phone number you wish to forward your calls to. Press Send and listen for a confirmation tone, and then press End. To cancel call forwarding (if you’re using the service provided by AT&T Wireless), on your phone, press *710 Send. Listen for the confirmation tone, and then press End.
■ Call Options Several options are available from this submenu. The most commonly used one, however, is the option to automatically answer the phone (when it’s open) by pressing any key (not just the Send or Accept button).
FIGURE 3-3 When your phone receives an incoming call, information about the caller will be displayed. You now have the option to accept or reject the call.
■ Call Waiting You have the option to turn off call waiting notification for incoming calls. If you’re already on the phone, the second incoming caller will get a busy signal or go directly to voice mail.
■ Caller ID This option allows you to block caller ID when you’re making outgoing calls. So, when you call someone else, your phone number will show up as “Private” or “Unavailable.” This is particularly useful if you’ll be calling people whom you’d prefer didn’t have your cell phone number. Using this option and programming your phone accordingly, you can choose to block your caller ID information to everyone, or allow your phone number to be displayed only to people in your phone’s contact database, for example.
To block your caller ID information for one specific call, when dialing a phone number, press *67 plus the phone number, and then press Send. If the person you’re calling has caller ID, your phone number will show up as “Private” or “Unavailable.”
■ Networks Using this option, you can stop your phone from automatically roaming if you leave the service area of your service provider. Under the Network Selection option, if you choose Automatic, the phone will automatically roam to another service provider (and incur extra charges) if you leave your service’s coverage area. With the Manual option selected, you can decide whether or not you wish to make or receive a call when roaming.
With the phone closed, you can reject an incoming call (when the phone is ringing) by pressing the Jog Dial button twice on the MPx200. (This button is located on the side of the closed phone.) Likewise on the i600, you can press the Volume Up button on the side of the closed phone to reject a call. On most Smartphones, the caller ID information will be shown on the phone’s outside display when the phone is closed. This will enable you to see who is calling so you can decide to accept or reject the call without having to open the phone or answer the call.