INTRODUCTION:
I choose not to use many hacks on the i730/i830 because some of them just cause it to be unstable or unreliable. I agree that things like having the WiFi and Phone working at the same time would be wonderful and "occasionally" useful, but currently you take risk by making it work, and it sometimes makes the phone unstable. For a complete (well almost complete) refer to the FAQ. The hacks are explained there, and you can choose which one to install. From experience, backup your i730/i830 (is this sounding repetitive?, good, do it, backup often, don't ask questions, do it) before attempting any hacks or changes.

Now with many of the "hacks" that I do are just registry changes. I am going to list them here and what they do. I will also try to explain what "other" changes to the same registry key might do, incase you want something different. I also will NOT go in to detail on the hacks available that I DON'T use. They are explained in detail in the i730/i830 forum, and since they aren't used here, they don't belong here. Some of them might be good, and well worth checking out (WiFi and Phone together, bluetooth com ports, all audio over bluetooth, etc), I just don't use them as the phone becomes more unstable.

So again, this section is to list the hacks and some general information before the guide tells you when to do them. This basically just gives you the information you need on using a registry editor, and what each hack does and the options of that hack. So on with the hacks....

HACKS - Files and Registry Changes:
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Registry Editor and information - To do registry changes you need a registry editor. The Windows Mobile 2003SE OS does not include one, but lucky for you, I included the one from PHM called PHM Regedit. It is part of the MRailing i730/i830 Tools Pack and will be setup with a shortcut in the Programs list if you follow my guide. There are other registry editors out there, and you can use any one that you would like, but these instructions will be based off the PHM Regedit tool.

Some other information that most newbies question is what is the registry and what do your abbreviations mean? The registry is what powers the device. It is essentially the database of instructions that tells the OS what do to. So when you make a change, it changes how the device works. You want to make SURE you have a backup of your phone before you make changes, because you could make your phone unstable, lockup, or just plain not work because of making changes. So backup before editing anything in the registry or you might be doing ANOTHER hard reset to get your phone back to normal, and having to do all these changes again.

Some terms that will be used:

HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)
HKCU (HKEY_CURRENT_USER)

That get's asked a lot, and this is something you need to know when referencing a key.

A key in the registry is particular place in the registry that contains some type of value and that value being a string, binary, DWORD, Multi-String, or Expanded String Value. I am not going to go in to details as to what each of those mean, as each registry change will explain which one to choose. You just need to know that when I say navigate to "said" key (HKCU\ControlPanel\Desktop), you know to select the overall key, and when I say change "said" value (wallpaper), you know to change the value, create a particular vaule in "said" key (HKCU\ControlPanel\Desktop).

To change a key vaule, you click the value that needs to be changed, in the above example you would click "wallpaper" in the HKCU\ControlPanel\Desktop Key. This brings up the value properties box, which is different depending on the type of value being editied, and in our example is a String value. You have two fields, Value Name, which is what shows up as the name of the value (this is important, because if you change the name of the value and the Windows OS doesn't know the new name you typed, that value is no longer used and could cause problems). Also in the properties page is the Data section, and this is what that name contains, and in our example is a file path for the backgound image of the desktop.

Once values are changed and you click OK, the registry is then saved. So make sure when you change items you only click OK when you double check it. Now the registry settings that you change WON'T take affect until you reboot the Pocket PC, so keep that in mind for two reasons. 1. if you make a mistake, as long as you don't reset the Pocket PC (i730/i830), then you still have time to change it again, and 2. Your change might not take affect until you reboot, which means you might not notice anything different until you restart, which could cause problems if you didn't do it right. So again make sure you backup before messing with the registry and follow instructions to the letter.

So again the disclaimer, you could mess up your phone and cause you to do another hard reset if you mess with the registry and don't understand the commands.
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Big Dialer - Keypad Ready Hack - When you slide open the phone and have the phone app open, a BIG Keypad Ready image appears in the middle of the screen and covers the phone app. I hate this, as well as many other people. It's very easy to change and just requires renaming a registry entry so that windows doesn't know where to find the image. You can also delete the entry for it, but I like to just rename it. The easiest way to do this is to open the PHM Regedit app from the programs list (it will be there later), click "Tools", click "Find". In the Find What box, type "bigdialer.dll" without the quotes, and check all three of the Look At (Keys, Values, Data) and then click Find Next. You should be in Key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{B80CA04A-329F-4631-8B3F-6AA90424790F}\InprocServer32\

and you should see a Value name of "Default" with the data being "BigDialer.dll". Click it to open the data, and then rename the Value Data to "BigDialer1.dll", click OK.

This removes the dialer screen.

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Change the System Clock to also have the Date - I hate having a big Today Screen Plugin of the day and date. Why not have it with the clock in the system tray at the top of the screen, this way it's alwasy visible. You can do this, here's how. The i730 is missing the entry in the registry so we have to add it. Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shell

You will see nothing listed in the bottom Value Box. With Shell being selected in the top box, click "Edit" and then click "New String Value". Name this

TBOpt

and give it a value data of:

3

This will make the clock display Date and Time. Other settings can be:

0 = Nothing is displayed
1 = Only the Time is displayed
2 = Only the Date is displayed
3 = Date & Time are both displayed

The normal setting should be 1 (time only), but the i730 doesn't have this string automatically (I don't know about the updated firmware or the i830). Other Pocket PCs might already have this value added, so you might not need to make it if you are using this guide for something other than the i730.

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Change the default Pocket IE Start Page - Verizon provides us with a nice little branded MSN/Verizon start page with quick links to some nifty mobile stuff. This is a nice page for newbs and advanced users alike as it has links to mobile friendly pages for weather, sports, hotmail, news, etc. I don't want it though, as I want my own start page, and by default Pocket IE doesn't let us change this by typing in a page, so again we do a registry change (you could navigate to the page and then click tools and then options and then click use current, but since we are "hacking" the registry, let's just do it during setup. Navigate to:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

You will see a large list of values in the bottom pane, find the one that says "start page" and click it to edit. Change the page to whatever value you want, keeping the entire address with the http in the front. Heck you could put the mobile version of pdaphonehome.com found at ****** (will be replaced when the link is released). Or if you want something simple, use the mobile Google search page at:

http://www.google.com/xhtml

or

http://mobile.google.com/local (this is for Google Local).

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Change the location and limit the size of the Pocket IE Cache - Pocket IE by default is in Main Memory, which sucks if you browse the web as Main Memory gets eaten up by your temp files. Yes you can clean them out manually, or do a soft reset (reboot), but why not just change their location and size limit. Note that changing the size will also cause you to use more data as it won't keep as many files cached for browsing the web. Also cached files help make browsing sites a little faster as it can reuse the same images.

So first thing we do is change the location from Main Memory to SafeStore, so navigate to:

\HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\

and then change the following values and data:

Find the value "cache" and change the value data to "\safestore\internet\cache" (without quotes)

Find the value "cookies" and change the value data to "\safestore\internet\cookies"

Find the value "history" and change the value data to "\safestore\internet\history"

Now each of the values will be in SafeStore instead of Main Memory. But wait there's more! We can also limit the amount of cache/temp files are stored.

Navigate to:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\Cache\Content

you will see a value title "CacheLimit" with a whopping big value (I think 15 MB in size). We don't need that much so change the value to "3072" (without the qutoes). This will change the cache size to 3 MB in size, which will still let you cache enough images for a few websites, which should still make browsing fairly fast without using up much space.

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Change Ring Tones Default location - Since I use Photo Contacts Pro to handle my ringtones, I normally have all my favorite ringtones in SafeStore for easy access, and not taking up space in Main Memory. (Note that I would NOT store them on a SD card. The i730 when asleep, disconnects from the SD card, which means that occasionally ringers won't work. Either keep Ringers in SafeStore, or Main Memory). We can tell the i730 where to look for the ringers on the phone with a simple registry change. First thing is to use File Explorer on the i730 (found in the programs list) and go to SafeStore and create a folder called "ringers". This is where all of your ringers will go. Navigate to:

HKCU\ControlPanel\SoundCategories\Ring

and click the Value Name of:

Directory

and change the Value Data to:

\safestore\ringers\

This will change the location of the Ringers Folder to SafeStore\Ringers. This however doesn't affect some tones on the phone including txt message tones. These are still needed to be copied to \windows\ directory as a MIDI file or a WAV file.