Adjusting the Scroll Wheel Speed on Samsung BlackJack II

This has long been something that owners of the BlackJack II have complained about.  The scroll wheel is a pretty good idea, but it takes too much to make it go around.  One full rotation is required to move the highlighted item by 1 step.  Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done with the original BlackJack II.

However, if you have a BlackJack II that is running Windows Mobile 6.1, you’re in luck. First off, Samsung has addressed the speed issue from the get-go.  Now, a quarter turn will move the highlighted item by 1. Which in turn means that 1 full rotation is the same as moving 4 places. There’s no interface for adjusting the speed of the scroll wheel, however, if you’re still looking for more from your scroll wheel there is a registry location that you can play around with.

Using your favorite registry editor, browse to HKLM / Software / Samsung / KeyRun.  In this location you should see a entry called WheelSpeed with a value of 1.  I changed this to a number of different values, but the only one that seemed to make a difference was 0 (Zero). No reboot is required after making the change.  I simply closed the application and then relaunched it  (You might even be able to skip that step, but I wanted to be sure). Now, with 1 full rotation, I can move 12 spots in the list. It’s not the same level of responsiveness as the i620, but it’s much better than before.  

And for everyone that is wondering if they can put this setting on their BlackJack II running Windows Mobile 6; the answer is no.  I did try that and there was no change on the device - that I noticed anyway.

Happy scrolling!

Hacking the Quick Launch App on Samsung BlackJack II

In my previous post about the quick launch application on the BlackJack II, I talked about some keys being locked to pre-loaded applications. It would be nice if I could remove the AT&T Mall shortcut as I’ll never be using that. Same goes for the Media Net shortcut. It’s not that those aren’t valuable services, I’m just not using AT&T so they don’t make any sense for me to have.

To remove this restriction, you will need a registry editor that can modify the device’s registry. I like to use the one that comes with SOTI’s Pocket Controller Pro. But there are plenty more to pick from, including ones that run on the device like Resco and PHM.

So, fire up this registry editor and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Samsung \ KeyRun. You will see a value in that location called PreDefined and you’ll never guess what values it has stored in it. That’s right, it has the letters that are restricted and cannot be changed. Simply edit this value and remove the letter you want to change or remove all the letters, the choice is yours. Once you’ve made the changes, just reopen the Function Key option from the settings menu and you can now set the letter you want to the program of your choice. A word of warning on this - be careful to setup everything the way you like.  I went to delete a tag I didn’t want and it repopulated the predefined values on me. 

If you don’t want to mess around with the predefined values; If you look under the KeyRun folder in the registry, you will find a number of letters. Each entry here is defined in the functions list.  Simply modify the letter you want to point to your application of choice. AppPath should be the path to the program and AppTitle should be the name of the app. 

Let me know how these work out for you.