I’m not talking about your regular Ctrl+C, Alt+F4, etc. shortcuts here, but more the “shorter route” meaning of shortcut.  Those of you who got a new #Windows_Phone phone for Christmas (or before) are probably now aware of the different keyboards available.  These are as follows:

• Main keyboard – standard characters
• Symbols – two pages of symbols
• Emoticons – two pages (!) of various emoticons

The long way round

For those who don’t read around for hints and tips, when inserting a smiley face you’re probably still tapping the emoticon key, tapping on a smiley face, then tapping the emoticon key again to return to the main keyboard.  Sure, it’s not that long, but there is a quicker (with a bit of practice) way.

The quick way

This method is fairly similar to how the HTC Keyboard worked on Windows Mobile 6.x.  I will give an example: to quickly enter a number 3, tap and hold the number button [123], then drag your finger (or sausage) to the number 3 key [3], then let go.  A 3 will be inserted, and the keyboard will return to the main keyboard.

As it is, this method only works for numbers and symbols on the first page of characters.  The same can be applied for emoticons.

And now something extra…

It’s not just the extra keyboards that this works on.  There are certain keys (quite a few actually) that offer extra characters when held down.  For example, the period key [.] – hold this down and it will pop up with a dash [-], exclamation mark [!], colon [:], question mark [?], and the period [.].  This saves you having to go into the symbols page (though, in this case, they’re all on the first page of symbols anyway).  Some letters offer up accented versions of themselves.

It’s not just characters on the main keyboard that have this function – try the [£] key on the symbols page (or [$], or [€], etc., depending on your main keyboard language).  Holding it down will bring up the other currency characters, dollar [$], cent [¢], pound [£], Euro, [€], yen [¥], and the generic currency symbol [¤].

The list

Update: Found some more! See the [.com] and [.] keys at the bottom of the list. I’ve also discovered a couple of new characters since the Mango update – these are marked in this lovely shade of green.

Here’s a (hopefully) complete list of which key offers which symbols.  These are all taken from the standard English (United States) keyboard, and should be fairly standard – the differences lie with letter arrangement and the default currency symbol.

In the table below, the key shown in the Key column refers to the regular key; i.e., not the pop-up version of it (there are no pop-ups within a pop-up… this isn’t Inception).  Note that upper case letters offer upper case versions of other characters (e > é, E > É).

Main keyboard

Symbols keyboard (both pages)

URL mode (when entering a web address)

Email mode (when entering an email address)

† – Depending on your selected keyboard language.