I spend way too much time on my Blackberry Curve. I won’t deny it. But it wasn’t until recently that a found some great tricks to make my time spent on my Crackberry more efficient. I found it rather annoying having to scroll around my menu so often as I bounced around from application to application. Being a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts, I wanted to find shortcuts for my Blackberry. Here are my findings for the home screen.
Home Screen Shortcuts
*Dial from Home Screen must be turned off for these to work. Phone>Options>Dial From Home Screen>No.
| Messages |
M |
Phone |
Green Send Key |
| Return to Home Screen |
Red End Key |
Address Book |
A |
| Calendar |
L |
Profiles |
F |
| Tasks |
T |
Memo Pad |
D |
| Saved Messages |
V |
Help |
Alt-Left Shift-H |
| Calculator |
U |
Alarm |
R |
| Options |
O |
Lock |
K |
| Blackberry Browser |
B |
Compose Message |
C |
| Search |
S |
Yahoo Messenger |
Y |
| Google Talk |
G |
AOL Instant Messenger |
I (Capital i) |
I hope these help you as much as they have helped me! I’m working on a list of all the little tips and shortcuts I can find for the message services next. Stay tuned!
Update: For those of you who ask about my ‘cover’ for my Curve, I am using this one:
BlackBerry Rubberized Skin
I’m a recent adapter to the world of the Blackberry with my BlackBerry Curve 8330 (or Crackberry as they are so honestly referred to). While friends and family have had them for a while, I was dead set on getting an iPhone. Well, without going into details, the network I choose was not AT&T, so I obviously didn’t get an iPhone.
I’ve found the Blackberry to be quite a unique tool. I’m using just standard Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) which seems to pretty much be push email with my Gmail account. I’m a Mac user and am left to use Boot Camp to do updates to the OS, but I do have a sync option in PocketMac. While this is great, it still means I have to connect my Curve to my Mac whenever I want to update my calendar. Then I remember, I have Gmail, which gives me Google Calendar. By simply adding the Google Sync app to my Blackberry, I now have, for all practical purposes, push email and a calendar that syncs with a server.
Before we get technical, I know, my contacts don’t sync, and I don’t have folder sync. I do, however, have an environment that resembles an Exchange environment, including sharing calendars since you can subscribe to another users calendar with Google.
Want to get on this boat? It’s simple, setup your Blackberry to use your Gmail account, then in your browser on the device, visit http://m.google.com/sync. That’s it, now enjoy your new environment, never having to connect your device to your computer unless it’s to do an OS update.