Now that you have your shiny new smartphone, the first thing you want to do is make sure that you get your email delivered there instead of to the old one. (It may not really be the first thing you want to do, but I’m the email product manager, so hang in there.) Making the swap is pretty straightforward.

Before we go any further, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this article on the BlackBerry Technical  Knowledge Solution Center. It covers things like erasing your old device, moving your corporate account and more. It even has a flowchart, if that sort of thing tickles your fancy.

Moving on…

Stick your SIM card in your new smartphone (assuming it’s the type that uses one) and power it up. For you fine CDMA folks, you’ll want to call your carrier and activate the new smartphone, if you haven’t already. Then, look for the icon called “E-mail Settings”, “Personal Email Set Up”, or some variation on that wording. If your device uses the nifty theme that looks like wireframe, the icon is nestled inside the folder called “Setup”. Either way, the icon is an envelope with a gear on it. Visual aid incoming:

Click the icon. Depending on your carrier, you may have to enter a username and password to log in first. After you log in, the service will notice that you have a new smartphone, and say “Hey, you used to use PIN 1234. Do you want to change to PIN 5678?” Take a deep breath, and click “Yes”. Again, depending on your carrier, you may need to enter the passwords for any email accounts you had associated with your smartphone before. If so, go ahead and enter them as prompted until it tells you you’re done.

That’s it! You’ll start getting email on your new smartphone in about 15 or 20 minutes, and you can start sending right away. Contemplate the sweetness of your new BlackBerry smartphone as you await that first buzz of an incoming email.

-Mark

However, my experience since has shown that shortcuts are often unknown to many users. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’d be demonstrating something to a customer at a tradeshow, only to be asked “How did you do that?” as I whisked my way through the message list and emails.

Now, many people will find that the keyboard shortcuts on a full QWERTY smartphone, like the BlackBerry® Bold™, to be fairly intuitive. “N” for the next message, “P” for the previous message, “R” to reply, and so forth. But when confronted with a SureType® keyboard, like those found on the BlackBerry® Pearl™ series , many customers assume there simply aren’t shortcuts on the SureType devices. The truth is though, they’ve just moved around a little. Not all of the shortcuts made it over from the full QWERTY keyboard, but the important ones that let you navigate your message list like a pro are still there.

The “key” (ha ha) to navigational shortcuts on SureType is to think of the number keys like a directional pad. Numbers on the top row are generally for moving up, and numbers on the bottom row are for moving down; functions are paired top to bottom and left to right as well. Here’s how it works:

1 – Move to the top of the open message, or the top of the message list (newest message)
7 – Move to the bottom of the open message, or bottom of the message list (oldest message)
3 – Move one screen up in the open message / message list
9 – Move one screen down in the open message / message list
4 – Open the previous message, or go to the previous day in the message list
6 – Open the next message, or go to the next day in the message list

Now, for the actual message functions, you’re just going to have to employ a bit of memorization. 

! – Reply to the current message
? – Reply to all to the current message
. – Forward the current message
, – Compose a new message

It might not seem like a big deal, but keyboard shortcuts make managing your messages easier, whether you’re running through an airport clutching your carry-on, or killing time waiting for your friends at the coffee shop. To get a full list of the shortcuts for your smartphone, you can either check your user guide or surf over to the website and look at the online documentation.

-Mark

EDIT: to include the full 4 / 6 shortcut list. Thanks James!