Taking Control of your Applications

Pharos Traveler Smartphones are actually very powerful, multitasking computers. Just like your desktop PC, your Pharos Traveler Smartphone has the capability to run more than one application at a time. You can, for example, switch from the Word document you’re creating to Opera Mobile in order to look up some information on the Internet. After you find what you need you can jump back to Word and finish your work. This is not the case with some very popular Smartphones which can only manage to do one thing at a time.

Windows Mobile applications are designed to make switching between different programs easy. Most applications simply sit in the background after you tap the Close button rather than actually exiting in order to make this possible. It’s only when your device runs low on resources that the applications really are closed. A few well designed programs like Pharos Smart Navigator provide an Exit command on a menu, but most programs don’t offer this option.

Closing Background Applications

As you can probably guess, having applications running in the background can have some impact on performance. That’s why you don’t keep every possible application running on your desktop PC if you want to play a graphics intensive game, but rather you close the programs you don’t really need. The same thing applies to your Smartphone—especially if you want to stretch your battery life to the maximum possible.

If your applications don’t really close when you tap the Close button, how do you close them? One answer is to use Task Manager—a feature included in Windows Mobile. Figure 1 shows an example of using Task Manager to see what is running and to close applications you no longer need.

Figure 1: Use Task Manager to monitor and control what is running.

Note: Earlier versions of Windows Mobile included the Task Manager function in the Memory applet on the Running Programs tab..

While Task Manager is certainly capable of shutting down applications, it’s not exactly the most convenient way to accomplish the task. To use Task Manager you need to go to the System tab of Settings and open Task Manager. Then you can choose what you want to close and tap End Task at the bottom of the screen.

Enter X-button

Your Pharos Traveler Smartphone offers a much easier and intuitive method of closing applications called X-button. Once enabled, X-button allows you to close applications by either tapping the Close button or by tapping and holding the Close button. Figure 2 shows your choices in X-button.

Figure 2: Choose the method of closing applications.

You’ll find X-button on the System tab of Settings. Once you run X-button your Traveler Smartphone will remember your settings so you don’t need to run the applet again unless you want to change those settings.

You may be wondering why X-button offers two different methods of closing applications. The answer is simple—if you choose the tap and hold method, you can decide which programs to leave running in the background. If you choose the tap method, a single tap will always close an application.

So there you have it—your Pharos Traveler Smartphone offers one more useful feature to make your life simpler.