If you’ve seen the HTC HD Mini, or at least pictures of it, you might have noticed that it lacks the classic Start button either on the top left corner or at the bottom of the screen. Even more, if you are using a device running Windows Mobile 6.5.x, like the HTC HD Mini, you also noticed that the HD Mini has text only Soft Buttons.

Turns out you can apply these customizations with a simple Registry Edit but be careful, hiding your Start Button on devices lacking dedicated hardware Start buttons will most likely make your life difficult without being able to access the Start Menu anymore!

The Registry entries to be modified all reside inside HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftShellBubbleTiles (you will only find these if you are running Windows Mobile 6.5.x – the one with the Soft Buttons at the bottom, and not Windows Mobile 6.5). The DWord entries responsible for the behaviour are TextModeEnabled, HardwareStartKeyEnabled and HardwareDoneKeyEnabled. Setting the DWord value to 1 enables the entries while 0 will disable them. TextModeEnabled will have as a result displaying text only Soft Buttons, HardwareStartKeyEnabled and HardwareDoneKeyEnabled will instruct the OS that your device has dedicated hardware buttons for these and hide them.

As always, make sure to have a full backup handy just in case and remember to Soft Reset after applying the changes.

(Via: XDA Developers)