Gordon's Tech: BlackBerry Pearl

Monday, January 28, 2008

BlackBerry Pearl - usage tips

For us the BlackBerry Pearl is a waystation on the way to iPhone 2.0, but Google is making it at least interesting. So I went hunting for tips, and found a few on "Tong Family Blog":

The codecs include AAC! I just tested it and they work very well.

Some of my favorite shortcuts (mostly from the Tong list but I've since added a few of my own):

To move to the top of a screen (web page esp), press 1.
To move to the bottom of a screen, press 7.
To change text input methods when in a text field: Press the Menu key and then Click Enable Multitap or Enable SureType. (SureType is very unsure when entering URLs and usernames.)
To switch applications, hold the Alt key and press the Escape (back) key. Continue holding the Alt key and roll the Pearl to select an application. Release the Alt key.
To return to the Home screen, press the End (hang up) key.
To lock the keyboard, from the Home screen, hold the asterisk (*) key. To unlock the keyboard, hold the asterisk (*) key and press the Send key
To switch between the Default and Vibrate notification profiles, from the Home screen, hold the pound (#) key.
To assign a speed dial number to a key, from the Home screen or in the Phone application, hold the key you want to assign. Type the phone number.
To insert a period, press the Space key twice. The next letter is capitalized.
To insert a period (.) in the Go To dialog box, press the Space key. To insert a forward slash (/) in the Go To dialog box, hold the Shift key and press the Space key.
To open the bookmark list from a web page, press 5.
To add a bookmark from a web page, press the question mark (?) key.
To view a thumbnail version of a web page, press X. To return to the normal view, press any key. You can navigate a long web page by scrolling the thumbnail.
To toggle the banner on a web page, press the exclamation point (!) key again.