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How Your BlackBerry 10 Phone Can Help Save Your Summer Vacation

07.22.16 / ecjamieson

Multi-ethnic family waiting in airport

It’s that time of year – the time when many people are packing up and heading away for a vacation. Sometimes, vacations are a good chance to unplug and spend quality time with your family and friends. But before you go, do you know all of the ways your BlackBerry 10 phone can help you vacation better?

Recently, we asked our followers how their phones help them vacation better. We want to share a few of our favorite tips, as well as some of our own.

1. Don’t Worry About Forgetting Something – Use BlackBerry Remember

Having a hard time remembering to pack your charger, lock the garage door, and shut off the lights? BlackBerry Remember has you covered! Stay organized like Mark does with the app, where you can create tasks and notes to keep you organized.

  • A Task allows you to set up a reminder (recurring or one-time) for yourself to complete a particular task – useful if you have to remember to set the alarm right before you leave.
  • A Note allows you to create a text note – useful for making packing lists or a list of jobs to finish before you leave.

You can add pictures to your notes or tasks, and you can create voice memos for yourself – so you can multitask while you make a packing list! To learn more about everything the Remember app offers, read this article.

2. Let People Know You’ll Be Away

Taking a vacation usually means taking a break from checking your work emails. Make sure the people who may contact you during your vacation know not to expect an immediate response by setting an out of office reply.

You can set automatic replies easily from the BlackBerry Hub. Simply

And, even better, the BlackBerry 10 OS allows you to set up different out of office responses for those inside and outside your organization if your email account supports this feature.

So, if you want to tell your colleagues to hold questions until you return, but you want clients to be directed to another point of contact, you have that option! Just turn on the optional Send Automatic Replies Outside of the Organization. For more information, read this article.

3. Make a Plan – But Keep It Flexible With Your BlackBerry Calendar

As J-P points out, your Calendar app is another great resource for trip planning. Add your flights, sight-seeing excursions, and more into your calendar. To add an event, open your Calendar app and hit priv_plus at the bottom of your screen. Once you enter all the details, hit Save.

This can help keep you organized, but it can be flexible as well! If your plans change (as plans often do), moving a calendar entry is a simple matter of pressing and holding the Calendar entry, and then either click the BBM-Trash to get rid of an event, or the Edit to edit date, time, or even location.

When creating an event, you can choose which calendar you would like to save it under, if you have multiple calendars set up on your phone. This allows you to save your vacation calendar entries to your personal calendar, and keep them separate from your work calendar! You can also customize the color of each calendar, so you can tell the difference between multiple events. To do this:

  1. In the Calendar app, swipe down from the top of the screen
  2. Tap Settings, followed by Calendar Colors
  3. Tap a calendar and specify your desired color

While on vacation, if you want to hide your work calendar so that you can just focus on your vacation activities, you can hide a calendar temporarily from within the Calendar app. In the app, swipe down from the top of the screen, tap FTF_Calendar_Icon, and uncheck the boxes next to the calendars you want to hide

4. Use Time Zone Preview to Get Your Timing Right When Traveling Across Zones!

Another great travel tool is your BlackBerry 10 Clock app! As Richard points out, in addition to providing alarm, timer, and stopwatch functions, the Clock app also provides you with a world clock. You can add as many cities as you want by following these simple steps when in the Clock app:

Tip: After you’ve added a city, clicking on the city name will pull up the current weather in that location!

This can be useful if you want to know the time in your destination, and it’s also great when communicating across time zones. When calling to check in on your parents, kids, friends, or anyone else, this function can help you ensure you’re calling at the right time, no matter the time difference between you while you’re away!

Family packing mini van before vacation5. When You Get Back, Try Viewing Your Pictures on a Map. Especially for Road Trips, It’s a Nice Way to Relive Your Adventures!

This tip is a personal favorite of mine. When you get home, it can be easy to share your memories with others, or simply reminisce on your own. Using the View Pictures on a Map function on BlackBerry 10 can show you where each picture was taken, so you can retrace your steps!

Note: In order to view your pictures on a map, you must enable geo-tagging in the Camera app.

To learn about how to use this feature, check out this blog post.

Were these tips helpful? Sound off in the comments if you have questions, comments, or more tips to share! Also, watch the @BlackBerryHelp Twitter channel for more content calls – who knows, we may feature your tip next!

To learn about your BlackBerry 10 smartphone, or troubleshoot an issue, there are several great options available to help. Visit http://blackberry.com/support for access to product documentation, how-to demos, tips and tricks, YouTube videos, support forums, knowledge base articles, Twitter support, and contact information for your region.

This was originally posted on the Inside BlackBerry Help blog.

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