How to dial contacts quickly on Android

Calls are the foundation on which the smartphones of today are built on, yet, somehow, phone makers often mess this one up — sometimes significantly. Whether it's their disorganized look, non-intuitive controls (or lack of), or some other gripe, it's fair to say that getting the app with the little green (or blue!) phone icon right isn't that simple. One of our biggest complaints, for example, is some Android UIs' insistence on always defaulting to the dial tab, regardless of where you left off. That's a peculiar (to put it nicely) decision on the part of phone vendors, for we're far past remembering individual numbers, let alone to a dozen of our contacts. Worse yet, in most cases, it's a select few people we spend most of our time talking to over the phone.

So defaulting to the dailer page (raise hands if your phone does this) isn't really a smart idea, but thankfully, there's something you can do to speed up the process and avoid having to switch to another tab and then hunt down the person you're looking to give a mouthful to. It's what we call T9-style dialing, and it's okay if you've never heard of it. It has, after all, been a long time since was last talked about T9 keyboards. 

Here's how it works: