In recent weeks I had become more and more frustrated with a couple of things on my Samsung Focus.  At Happy Hour with a friend from the Windows Phone team, I complained about these things, and over a few texts in the days following, I found out that some of what I wanted was already there.  Then, after hunting the Interwebz, I found a couple other features that I probably wouldn't have known about otherwise.  In most cases, it was a feature found only by pressing-and-holding.  I thought I would share these tips with you.  If you already knew about them, well, then move along, move along :-)

1 - Deleting individual text messages - Just press-n-hold an individual message to get the context menu for deleting the message (or, forward or copy!) 

I was frustrated that it seemed as if my only option in removing old text messages was to delete an entire thread/conversation with a contact.  For example, I wanted to delete all the never-again-relevant 'pick up milk' type of messages between my husband and I, but I don't want to delete our messages from the day of the Beast Quake.  I had tried tapping on an individual message, but that didn't give me any delete option. Turns out you need to press-n-hold.

2 - Cursor placement - Press until the I cursor/bar shows up.  Keep pressing! Then drag your finger left or right to insert it where you want it.

I have had numerous occasions of loud cursing when I will have typed a long URL or word, only to notice a typo, but I could never get the cursor placed where I needed it, nor could I figure out how to move the cursor left or right. I would tap here, tap there, tap and tap and tap. Failing,  I would end up highlighting the whole thing and typing all over.

3 - Getting to accented letters - Hold down the letter to get those options.

I couldn't ever find them so I just Tweet and post statuses looking like a fool.

4 - Deleting a message without opening it - Press and hold the individual mail in list view and you will see a context menu for deleting, moving or marking as unread/read.  While you can tap just left of the subject of the mail and see the delete or move in one more tap (and tap the three dots to get to mark as read/unread), this may be a handy way of knocking out mail if you don't like the column of checkboxes to pop open.

5 - Fast forwarding a track in Zune - Press and hold on the skip track/restart icon and it will just fast forward/rewind.

This wasn't really annoying me a whole lot, only a little, but I'm glad to know about it now :)

So, the next time you can't find a feature on Windows Phone 7, you just might try pressing-and-holding things to see if you get a context menu or a different behavior than just tap.

Enjoy~

April