There's a Patch For That! (Part 2)
Welcome to the second installment of "There's a Patch for That." Patches are modifications (tweaks) that add key features to existing Palm applications. For instance, have you wished for message forwarding or landscape mode for messaging, email, or PDF's? Do you wish the Palm Pre webOS had other key features? Pre users have developed over 60 patches to make these and other wishes a reality!
In There's a Patch for That (Part 1) we saw 14 of our favorite patches including the On Screen Keyboard, LED Notification, Launcher, and Email patches. Now we will explore patches that customize alerts and notifications, as well as the Messaging, Calendar, Contacts, and Phone Apps. Note that the hundreds of Homebrew Apps are separate programs, not patches.
The Getting Started: Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes guide shows you how to install and remove patches. For a list of patches, see Patches. As always, the usual warnings apply. You're patching system webOS files, so stuff can break here. For many Pre users, though, the risk is well worth the reward. (See: How to Revive a Pre.)
Here are more of our favorite patches...
All the Bells and Whistles
First up on today's patch tour are patches that allow you to customize your message and alert sounds. Of these patches, SMS Tone Per Contact gives you the most flexibility including new options in Sounds and Ringtones to set your own Alert and Notification sounds (much like My Notification).
In fact, you can choose two different sounds as in this example, Crickets and Crickets2. (People make the funniest faces when they hear Crickets!) This patch also lets you set a different alert sound for each contact as well as custom ringtones! (To restore the default Alert and Notification sounds, install My Notification and tap the My Notificaion menu and then tap Reset Defaults.)
Messaging Patches
Next up on the patch tour are some of the Messaging patches. How about the Character Counter patch so that you know how many characters you have used of the 160 character limit?
Take a look at the screenshot below. Can you spot the two patches here?
OK, the obvious one is the avatar circled in red. That is the Add an Avatar tweak from the webOS Quick Install that allows you to select a 32x32 PNG image as your avatar. Also, notice how the time is shown for each message. The example above is also using the "Messaging Timestamp Builtin" patch. Other options include the Messaging Timestamps - Clean patch.
There's a Smile For That
A fun patch for messaging and emails is the Smiley Faces in Symbol Box patch. Once installed, press and hold the Sym key and then K or Sym and Z for two fun sets of emoticon smiles.
Phone a Friend
Users have developed extraordinary patches for the Pre's Phone app as well. In some areas, you might get better service (and battery life) if you can force the Pre to always be in Roam mode. The Enable Roam Only Option patch gives you a new Roam Only option in the Phone App's Preferences menu under Network:
Another cool patch addresses the situation where you get a call that just shows the number but has no contact or caller ID name. You can still see at least the state with the Match State to Area Code patch:
Next up is the Call History During Call patch. This patch adds a Call History option in the drop down menu during a call. (We don't know who "Jennifer" is in this screenshot, but we would like to meet her! And who is that Dieter guy?)
Another favorite is the No Alert During Call patch that will disable alerts during a call and re-enable them automatically when you hang up. Maybe the most popular phone patch of all is the "Enable Dial Pad Vibration" patch which also silences the dial pad tones!
So far we have explored just 28 of the 70+ great patches that are available. There are so many amazing patches that they just could not fit into even two articles. The last installment in this series, There's a Patch for That! (Part 3), is out! Also see There's a Patch for That (Part 1).
Craig Lincoln, aka Milominderbinder, is a moderator on the PreCentral forums and the developer of the Palm Pre Tips and Tricks. Craig's recent articles include Music Player (Remix), There's a Patch for That (Part 1), Part 2, and Part 3, and Getting Started: Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes.
PS If you need help, please post your request in the forums such as webOS Quick Install, Preware, or Patches
