Regardless of who you are or where you live, the odds are good that you will find yourself pressed for time, grabbing your BlackBerry® device and trying to squeeze in some extra productivity. To BlackBerry users, productivity is the name of the game. While it would be great if we could slow down the pace of our lives, the reality is that we have to become more efficient instead. There are many simple shortcuts built into the BlackBerry® smartphone OS. Here are a few of my favorite shortcuts to help make your life a bit easier.

Let’s Rock n’ Scroll This!

Most of us have a ton of messages in our unified Inbox, and scrolling back to the top after reading through a hundred or so messages can be a huge investment (or waste) of time. If you need to scroll to the very top or very bottom of your Inbox, you simply tap the letter “t” for the top or the letter “b” for the bottom. This works in individual emails, as well, which comes in handy for those long email exchanges.

Mind your R’s and F’s

Responding to an email or need to forward an email to a friend? Typing the letter “r” for reply or “f” for forward on your QWERTY keyboard quickly produces the desired management of the email. Remember that to delete an email, use the DEL key!

Help! You Know I Need Somebody…

Holding down the ALT key plus the letter “h” brings up the Help screen in OS6 and older. Typing the word “help” from the home screen in OS 7 brings up the Help icon to launch the app. Singing Beatles songs, while enjoyable, unfortunately does not bring up the Help menu.

Bonus: Everyone needs a little space

Here’s a tip for those BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) addicts out there: To quickly jump between your Chats, Contacts and BBM Groups simply tap the “space” key. This will save you from having to scroll through all your open conversations, to access your countless BBM Contacts, you popular person, you.

There are a ton of other great keyboard shortcuts available to BlackBerry users and many that could help your fellow BlackBerry user, so don’t be shy — share your favorites in the comments below!

If you aren’t already following @BlackBerryHelp and you want to receive lots of tips and tricks, start following today using Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones and keep an eye out for the #BBTips hashtag.

With that being said, here are the five popular tips that we’ve shared with our fantastic followers:

1. Video Camera Flashlight

Try the following steps to quickly turn a physical keyboard-equipped BlackBerry smartphone into a flashlight so you can find your way!

1. Open the Video Camera app
2. Press the space key to turn on or turn off the flashlight.

Note: Using a smartphone with a virtual keyboard only, such as the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9850 smartphone? If so, you can also make it a flashlight by opening the Video Camera App and pressing the Menu key, then selecting Options followed by checking the box for Video Light.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

Happy Friday #TeamBlackBerry! Today I’ve got five handy tips for when you are browsing the web on a BlackBerry® smartphone. For this post, I’ll be using my BlackBerry® Torch™ 9860 smartphone which uses the BlackBerry® 7 OS.

If you have a tip you’d like to share, make sure you leave a comment and let me know because your tip may be featured in an upcoming post.

Let’s get started!

1. Accessing Pop-up Menus

The next time you are using the BlackBerry® Browser, you can open a pop-up menu that contains a lot of commonly-used actions by touching and holding the screen or pressing the trackpad for a few seconds. I love this feature because it’s a quick way to share links with friends, family and coworkers.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

It’s the end of the week, so that means it’s Five Tip Friday! The focus this week: Five BlackBerry® smartphone shortcuts to help you speed through daily tasks. Some of you might already be using these tips, but for those who aren’t familiar with the following, here are some things you might want to know.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

Recently the Twitter® for BlackBerry® smartphones 2.0 app was updated with several changes and new features based on customer feedback. Today I’d like to provide an overview of the Trends feature, since it’s changed slightly in this latest update – not to mention it’s a favorite that I use a lot. I’ll also show you a bunch of useful shortcuts that you can take advantage of while using the Twitter app.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

Just the other day I realized that I’ve been using a BlackBerry® smartphone for over six years. During those six years, I’ve learned quite a few tips and tricks that have allowed me to maximize my smartphone experience. Today I’d like to share five of my favorite tips that I use daily, so grab your BlackBerry smartphone and let’s get started.

Tip 1 – Navigate menus quickly using your BlackBerry smartphone keyboard

This is a really handy tip that applies to BlackBerry smartphones that include a physical keyboard. Whenever you are presented with a menu, you can use your keyboard to quickly cycle through the various menu options by tapping the first letter of any option listed in the menu.

For example, in the screenshot at the top of this post, you’ll notice the menu that appears if you press the Menu key while using the Pictures application on your BlackBerry. If you want to select the “Set as Contact Picture” option, depending on which BlackBerry smartphone you are using, you can scroll up using the trackpad, or simply touch the screen.

My preferred method however is to hit ‘S’ on the BlackBerry smartphone keyboard, as this will start cycling through the Menu and land on anything that starts with an ‘S’. So the first time I hit ‘S’, the option of “Set as Wallpaper” will be highlighted. Hitting ‘S’ again will then highlight the “Set As Contact Picture” option, which is what I was looking for.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog

My friend pinged me a few days ago…

Friend: I just found a huge problem with my BlackBerry smartphone
Riz: Do tell
Friend: Well, you know when you call somewhere and want to dial by name…
Riz: Yes
Friend: Or you need to call a number like 1-800- RIZ-BLOG
Friend: You can’t do it!!

What do you mean you can’t do it? You can do just about everything on a BlackBerry device!

Unfortunately, this function needs a little tutorial. When you’re dialing a number like 1-800-RIZ-BLOG let’s leave it there… you need to enter letters, but your device is in some sort of number mode. How do you get out of number mode? Press and hold ALT as you type the letters when you want letters instead of numbers. Your device will translate the letters into the appropriate number.

That’s it!

Of course, it would be nicer if this was a little more “discoverable,” but I haven’t come up with any bright ideas on how to do this. Any suggestions?

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!