How To

We covered the screen capturing app for Windows Phone Mango not so long ago, but it's noted that the app is not able to take screen shots of games. The guys at Nanapho.jp have come across an easy work around that involves little effort. 

As one can see in the above photo, simply using the multi-task functionality, the user is able to save the screenshot of the game while in the task selection screen. Then simply use a photo editor to rotate and crop the image. There is a downside to this, as mentioned in their article, where the resolution of the captured images are 432×259 instead of 800x400. Check out an example below.

As well as gaming, this technique works when using the camera app as well as watching a movie. There's a slight sacrifice, but the functionality is worth it.

Source: Nanapho.jp (Translate)

One of the many welcomed features of Windows Phone 7.5, more affectionately known as Mango, is the ability to use custom ringtones. But how do you get the ringtone to the phone?

First, there are few limitations. The ringtone file must be in MP3 or WMA format, less then 40 seconds in length, less than 1mb in size and not protected with digital rights management (DRM).

There are a few ringtone apps reaching the Marketplace and we'll cover a few of them in the coming days. Most appear to be collections of ringtones that you can save to your Windows Phone but they don't allow you to create ringtones. That you can do on your own and to find out how, hit the jump.

After yesterday's news that HP is discontinuing all webOS mobile devices, many members of the very passionate and loyal webOS community, including myself, have been shocked into wondering what we are supposed to do next. While I'm not saying that I've already jumped ship to Windows Phone 7 from webOS already (I still love my devices and the community behind them), it's not uncommon to see that many of you are already planning your trip to the store to pick up a new smartphone to replace the soon-to-be-antiquated HP Veer, Pre 2 or even the original Sprint Palm Pre (what we back at PreCentral call the Pre-Minus). Let's get this straight, because I know how loyal you guys are to your platform, switching to a WP7 device is not abandoning the webOS platform - but HP has made it very clear that they're not making phones anymore, so what else are you supposed to do? 

I've been using WP7 on my Dell Venue Pro for a little while now, and even though it's not a shiny new HP Pre 3 running webOS 3.0, it does have a whole lot going for it. If I absolutely had to make the decision tomorrow (which I don't and I'm not... yet), it would be very easy for me to make Windows Phone 7, and WPCentral.com, my new home in the smartphone universe. Let me put it to you this way: If you're thinking about switching to another platform from webOS, WP7 is one of the best options, if not the best, out there for you to choose today.

It's easy to say all of that, though without backing it up; but that's why I've come to WPCentral today to help ease the pain and make things a little more comfortable for those of you joining this community. The webOS platform had a whole lot going for it as an operating system built on mobile devices. Synergy, Just Type, Multitasking, Touchstone Charging, Exhibition Mode, non-interrupt notifications system and other great features (just to name a few) made webOS wholly unique and intuitive - but to say that WP7 isn't already pushing forward with many of these concepts (and even jumping ahead in a few) is to be ignorant of the facts.

To be quite frank - WP7 over any other platform is probably the most similar to webOS as being intuitive and market-changing, and even though many of you might choose this platform simply because it isn't iOS, Android of Blackberry, you should also be choosing it simply because it's a great operating system to use.

Here, by popular request, is a guide to help your transition from whatever webOS smartphone you might be using over to a Windows Phone 7 device. Written by someone who has loved webOS since the day it was announced and will stick with it until the day that it is finally put to rest. 

We actually heard about this little issue from our own Jay Bennett, but others have taken note as well. In short, when using the Group Messaging feature in Mango, by default the messages will use the MMS format instead of SMS. The reason for this is not too clear, though it has something to do with trying to keep all the messages grouped together in a thread (perhaps someone with more knowledge can explain in comments).

However, you can (and probably should) turn this off.  Like a lot of folks, you may have a limited monthly allotment of MMS messages and you be charged a ton for a 'few' conversations otherwise. To disable this feature, simply go to Settings --> Applications --> Messaging and turn off the MMS part. So what about Group Messaging? Well, as far as we know, it still works but will now use the SMS method. Only downside, which we have to verify, is that it might not group properly. Still, that's a small inconvenience versus a large, unexpected bill at the end of the month, no?

Big thanks to 'We Love Windows Phone' for the tip and screen shots.

We've seen some "epic" style Captain America wallpaper a few weeks ago, but how about some custom "cute" styled ones? In the traditional Chinese style of taking all things menacing and making them freakin' adorable, those cats at IHeartWindowsPhone have made two versions of Capt. America that are pretty slammin'. Or just cute. Whatever.

We're not even comic fans but have to admit these are pretty great and since their free, why not just grab them here. A big thanks to IHeartWindowsPhone for sharing.

You should know by now that Windows Phone "Mango" has Facebook Chat built in to the Messaging app (see our full Mango review). Turning it on is actually pretty simple: navigate to the Messaging (SMS) app, hit Setting and enable. Or you can do it under Settings --> Applications --> Messaging. Easy enough, so why the how to? Well, this is more a "troubleshooting" thing i.e. you're one of the very few who can't it to work.

See, since I've been running "Mango"  (nearly a month next week), I could not get Facebook Chat enabled. Yup. Every time I'd throw that lil' switch, it would ask me to setup Facebook Chat, it would then open what looks like an embedded IE window where it would return with a "Page cannot be found". Seriously. It did this dozens of times and I just thought "welp, it's not enabled yet".

Long story short: I didn't have my Facebook account linked to my Windows Live one. Who knew it was necessary? It would have been nice for an error message to explain that but alas, I was lost till I ran across Mobility Minded's excellent step by step guide on setting this up. The guide was perfect right up to the point when I had to enable the feature and bam...it still didn't work.

The solution was an extra step not in Mobility Minded's otherwise great write up: delete the Facebook account on the phone and set it up again (just name and password). The next time I headed to Messaging --> Settings, Facebook Chat was magically enabled and all is good. Of course the funny part in all of this is I don't use Facebook or Chat period, except for testing. Still, this issue was nagging me and hopefully if any of you have something similar, it'll help too.

Kik is here, but there's a slight issue that we picked up on a while back when it was released. Being in the UK I attempted to use my .co.uk email address. Unfortunately Kik seems to have a slight issue with registering email addresses using this country code.

Fortunately, after much frustration, I used my GMail address and of course it worked. I don't really use my Google account for email so I decided to have a good look through the settings within the app and sure enough there's an option to change the account email address. Entering my .co.uk address seemed to work and I received an email from Kik confirming the change.

It seems as though it's limited to registration only, so use a .com email for signup and then simply make the change in the app settings. Job done! Kik have said they are working on the fix. Are you using a country code which is not .com and are experiencing the same issue? Let us know in the comments.

Organizing your Live Tiles and Live Tile generators are nothing new (see our earlier post on the topic). Heck, our own Rich Edmonds created a pretty swanky one on his blog for everyone. In that regard, MyLiveTile is not exactly ground breaking, but it is designed well enough and perhaps this post will serve as a reminder on how to do this or even that you can do this.

All this site does is create a perfectly sized square that you can "pin to your start screen" using Internet Explorer. The effect is spacers between your Live Tiles to give a better sense of organizations e.g. separate your games from your contacts from your apps. Pretty cool and it's actually quite handy, once you have 20 or more tiles on your device.

So navigate to http://www.mylivetile.com/ using IE on your device, follow the directions and walla, you're done. Now go organize your clothes closet already and no, we're not helping with that one, so don't ask.

(Thanks, Ramiro, for the heads up!)