Juggling various phone calls is a common occurrence in my household.  Whether it is a busy day at work or my toddler suffered yet another “traumatic head injury” (which is how I now reference it to get us to the head of the line with the doctor’s office), I often find myself making a slew of phone calls, leaving multiple messages and then having all of the return calls converge on me at the same moment.  Time and time again, these phone call storms have brought to light one nagging issue - how to end one of two calls when I have one on hold and one on the line.

I would think that for many people, it is a relatively common occurrence to be talking on the phone and have another caller beep in.  In most cases, you put the first call on hold, switch to the new caller and then figure out from there which call to continue on with.  Yet I cannot tell you how many times I have been in this exact situation and was left completely perplexed by my Palm Pre Plus.

So what’s the issue exactly?  If I pick up my call waiting, my Pre Plus shows a split screen.  On the top half of the screen is the initial call displaying an “On Hold” message and a double arrow icon that can be touched in order to go back to that call.  The middle of the screen shows the second caller with whom I am currently speaking.  The bottom of the screen shows an option to “End All Calls.”  This all seems fairly straightforward until I decide I want to end just one of the calls rather than all of the calls.  Where is that icon?

After much confusion and testing with multiple phones (thank you to my husband and mother who took part in and facilitated my experiments), I finally have an answer.  It’s not a perfect solution, but it is definitely a solution that I can live with.  And if you have been completely dumbfounded by this same issue like myself, then hopefully it will bring you some peace of mind as well.  

Once you have decided which call to go forward with, simply hit “End All Calls.”  Assuming the caller you said good-bye to hangs up and the caller you wish to continue with stays on the line, you should be good to go.  Within about 10 seconds of hitting “End All Calls”, the caller you had on hold and now wish to resume conversing with will pop back up on your screen (as if he is calling you back) and you can answer the call as you normally would.  Although it looks like this person called you back because you were disconnected, this caller has actually just been on hold the entire time and knows nothing different.

So while it may be a little disconcerting to seemingly hang up on both callers, especially when one is important, and you likely want to return to the “chosen” call immediately rather than waiting for your Pre Plus to register the connection, rest assured that as long as the person you want to continue talking to does not hang up his phone, his line will be popping back up momentarily.  Not a perfect solution, but a mystery solver nonetheless.