The Wednesday Request: How do you "alpha dial?" on a Smartphone?

Gang, I'm stumped. I have a question from a loyal reader, who has the Samsung Blackjack. She asks "How can I dial an 'alpha phone number' (e.g. 1-800-CONTACTS) from my phone when the keypad doesn't list the alphabet on the phone number keys?" I did a little searching and found that many of the Windows Mobile Smartphones suffer from this same problem!

In fact, my fellow staffer Edward M. Zabrek, pointed out in his review of the Motorola Q:

The second problem has to do with labels on the embedded numeric keypad. On most cell phones the number "2" is associated with the letters "A,B,C," the number "3" with "D,E,F," the number "4" with "G,H,I," etc. So if you see an advertisement that says, "for more information, dial 888-TELETYPE" it's relatively easy to dial the number on the phone's keypad. Unfortunately, the numeric keypad on the Q does NOT display these letter assignments. Unless you have them memorized, it's very difficult to make calls to numbers like these.

The Motorola Q doesn't have letters on each key that help you dial a phone number like 1-800-CONTACTS.

Obviously, with the Pocket PC, the on-screen phone pad shows the letters while you touch dial. But how can this be done on a WM Smartphone? I welcome your answers for the best way to solve this problem.