Blackberry Tour 9630

To some the Blackberry Bold was just too big and heavy, well, big and heavy for a Blackberry. That was the first reaction I received when I placed the Bold into the hands of several fans last year and it was only after seeing the performance of its large screen, full feature set, and gorgeous interface that those first impressions were forgotten. Then along came the Blackberry Curve 8900, small and slim as ever, but similarly powerful to the Bold and almost as packed with features. Which to buy? Ultimately you’d want both, or a device that exists between the two, a “missing link” berry. Such is the Blackberry Tour.

The Tour travels such familiar ground that if you have read about or played with any of last year’s Blackberry devices, you can quickly size it up in a glance and for that reason this review will be a little short.

The Tour wears the Bold’s tuxedo well. The black casing and chrome accents, especially around the trackball give it the premium sense of elegance to match the new Blackberry interface. I’m especially fond of the new backing design with its chrome logo and almost Art Deco segmentation. It actually suits the overall style better than the faux leather backing of the Bold.

The Tour’s small size allows it to fit very comfortably in the hand and similar to the Bold the keys on the QWERTY keyboard are indented so your thumbs will catch them as you spread them outwards, but offer no resistance when you move your thumbs to the centre.

One downside of crafting this hybrid is the screen. Now sporting RIM’s higher resolution interface, the 2.5” display falls just short of comfort. The main menu screen is fine for navigating features, but the fine print of web sites, Blackberry Maps, and many applications will induce just enough squinting to force you to change the settings for font sizes and display modes and even then it’s not as comfortable as it is to use on the Bold or Storm.

The Tour ranks among the best of smartphones in its feature set, somehow packing most of what you’d want into such a small body, yet each one works remarkably well. The Tour is a quad-band phone, allowing you to use it globally. It has an excellent 3.2 Megapixel camera, supported by a flash, auto-focus, and even image stabilization. There’s a built-in speakerphone, a proper 3.5 mm headphone jack, and 256 MB of internal memory with a microSD card slot for up to 16 GB more.

The Tour can act as a wireless modem, includes RIM’s Blackberry Maps with built-in GPS and a number of enhancements that come with the new RIM interface including a stylish clock, access to Blackberry World for additional apps, and a media player that can be used with optional software to sync with Apple’s iTunes.

Add that to RIM’s signature e-mail and messaging services and you have a smartphone that delivers one of the best experiences on the market.

What’s missing is Wi-Fi, a rather disappointing omission, and one that continues to perplex Blackberry fans as it shouldn’t be a difficult feature to add. It’s potential to shorten the battery life isn’t enough to justify its absence and including it would have only supported the idea of creating a Blackberry that offered the best of past models. Why try to create a Blackberry that delivers the best of all worlds only to fall short on one feature?

Wi-Fi is important, not because it can allow users to switch off their 3G connections and cancel their data plans, but because it can be used to help manage their monthly data usage and keep it under the limits. If you tend to leave your Blackberry on at night while you sleep, best to have it connected through Wi-Fi for free. Why pay for something that happens while you sleep and have no control?

While the Blackberry Tour delivers one of the best Blackberry experiences for CDMA-based networks Telus and Bell, against RIM’s past work it still falls short of the BlackBerry Bold. The gain you get with a smaller form factor does not make up for the loss that comes with a smaller screen and a lack of Wi-Fi support. The Bold is still the best Blackberry on the market.

Five Essential RIM BlackBerry Keyboard Tips and Tricks

1)Rapidly switch back and forth between blackberry application

The most basic way to switch from one BlackBerry app to another is to repeatedly hit the ESCAPE key while inside a program until you to get back to your icon screen. From there, you'd scroll your track ball or wheel to find the next app you want and then click to launch it.

A quicker and more efficient way to go from an active program to another program is to use a shortcut. While inside an application, hold down the ALT key--which is directly below the letter A key--and then click ESCAPE--the button with an arrow reversing directions and to the right of your trackball on 8000 series devices. While holding down ALT, you can then scroll left or right between apps, and you need only release the ALT key to select a program.

You need to be working in a specific application for that app to be available via the shortcut--in other words, the program needs to have been opened recently or still running. You can always access your Home Screen, BlackBerry browser, Options, Call Log, Messages and a few other apps depending on your device settings.

2) View Event Log Details, Free Up Memory by Clearing the List

Your BlackBerry's Event Log displays your system's recently run events and processes. If you're experiencing a problem with your BlackBerry or having an issue with a specific application or service, information from the Event Log can be helpful for troubleshooting. And it can be a good BlackBerry hygiene to clear out the log, to keep your device running smoothly.

To access your Event Log, go to your Home Screen, hold down the ALT key and then type "LGLG." The Event Log will then appear, and you can click a specific event for more information or hit your BlackBerry MENU key more options. The MENU key has seven dots in the shape of the letter B, and it's found directly to the left of BlackBerry devices with trackballs. You can copy event information using the MENU key and tailor your settings to log only specific types of events.

You can also free up some valuable device memory to help your device run faster by clearing your Event Log. To delete your list of events, hit the BlackBerry MENU key while any event is highlighted and then click "Clear Log." A dialogue box will then pop up asking if you're sure you want to delete the log. Once you confirm the deletion, your log will be cleared. (Donâ¬"t worry, if your IT department is running device management software along with its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, your company likely has its own record of this event log.)

3) Reboot Your BlackBerry Without Removing the Battery

Any experienced BlackBerry user knows that it's occasionally necessary to reboot your device after installing a new app, to solve performance problems, refresh your smartphone's memory or fix other minor issues. One way to do so is to remove your battery door and pull the power pack. After the battery is returned to the device, your BlackBerry reboots. This gets the job done, but it's time consuming to power down the device and then remove and replace the battery--and your battery door won't fit as snuggly if you're constantly taking it off.

The quickest and easiest way to reboot is via another BlackBerry keyboard shortcut. To reboot, simply hit ALT, RIGHT SHIFT and DELETE. The RIGHT SHIFT key is found on the bottom right corner of the BlackBerry keyboard and DELETE key is also on the right hand side and has the letters "DEL" on its face.

After pressing these three keys in tandem, your device powers down, your LED indicator turns red for a few seconds and the reboot process commences.

4) Change Your Signal Strength Display from Bars to Numbers

Most modern cell phones offer up some form of the "five-bars" to display users' wireless signal strength, and the BlackBerry default mode is no different. But if you want more precision than bars can offer, you can change to the numeric signal strength display mode.

The numeric mode shows wireless signal strength in decibels per milliwatt (dBm), a ratio measured power in decibels (dB), referenced to one milliwatt (mW).

To switch from bars to numbers, navigate to your BlackBerry home screen, hold the ALT key and enter in "NMLL." The signal display will then automatically display a dBm value. In general, a reading from -45 to -85 is considered very strong. Any reading that's lower than -85--for instance, -100--is weaker. To switch back to bar mode from numeric, just hit ALT again and retype "NMLL."

The numeric display can be helpful to determine specifics on how much a wireless signal degrades as you move from place to place. (It's also geek chic to read your cellular signal strength in dBm instead of boring old bars.)

5) Bring Up "Help Me" Screen for Device, System Data

Your device's Help Me screen displays useful device and system information like your vendor ID, BlackBerry platform version, OS version, PIN, International Mobile Equipment Identity (EMEI) number (which identifies your GSM device for the telecom carrier), cellular signal strength, free and total available memory and more. Most of this information can be found in various locations throughout your BlackBerry Options, but the Help Me offers a simple way to access all the data on a single screen.

To pull up the Help Me screen, navigate to your home screen and then press ALT, either SHIFT key and the letter H. To return to your Home Screen, hit ESCAPE or open the MENU and select Close.

Memoryup for BlackBerry

MemoryUp Pro is a powerful mobile RAM boosting tool and Java virtual machine (JVM) management application specially designed for smartphone users. It is a handy memory optimizer tool that will keep your smartphone running fast and efficiently. MemoryUp analyzes JVM RAM, recovers and re-allocates those not currently needed, and thus optimize the working performance of our mobile phones. MemoryUp is able to maintain a RAM big enough to let us enjoy ourselves without any unexpected pause due to insufficient memory.MemoryUp can reclaim lost resources and put them to better use. By reclaiming resources, the smartphone does not need to access the hard drive frequently.www.emobistudio.com will let you experience the wonderful use of your BB The program gives you a variety of configurable options so you can decide what settings are right for you. For example, you can have the program run at startup to give you an initial boost, or you can tell it to force the device to use a larger cache. These are things that might be needed by some and not needed by others, I think MemoryUp - Mobile Memory andRAM Booster simply makes BlackBerry device run smoother. It goes in and retrieves wasted memory, defragments it, and frees it up for use by programs that really need the memory.This auto "boost" feature runs in the background, constantly liberating memory that gets wasted by programs and so on. The program can even warn you if you should reach a critical point.

Blackberry Pearl 8100 Typing Shortcuts

The following shortcuts can be used when typing text in an application:

To type the alternate character on a key, hold the Alt key and press the character key.

To type an accented or special character, hold the letter key and roll the trackball left or right. Click a selected character.

To type a symbol, press the Symbol key. To view more symbols, press the Symbol key again. Type the letter that appears below the symbol to enter the corresponding symbol.

To insert a period, press the Space key twice. The next letter is capitalized.

To capitalize a letter, hold the letter key until the capitalized letter appears.

To turn on NUM lock, hold the Shift key and press the Alt key.

To turn off NUM lock, press the Alt key.

To insert an at sign ( @ ) or a period ( . ) in an email address field, press the Space key.

To type a number in a number field, press a number key. You do not need to press the Alt key.

To type a number in a password field, hold the Alt key and press the number key.

To type a letter in a number field, hold the Alt key and use the multi-tap input method to enter the letter.

To switch typing input languages, hold the Alt key and press the Enter key. Select a language, then release the Alt key. Note: To allow this functionality, on the Language screen, verify that the Use Input Method Shortcut field is set to Yes.

To select a line of text, press the Shift key and roll the trackball.

To select text character by character, hold the Shift key and roll the trackball left or right.

To cancel a text selection, press the Escape key.

To cut selected text, hold the Shift key and press the Delete key.

To copy selected text, press the Alt key and click the trackball.

To paste your cut or copied text, press the Shift key and click the trackball.

Top 20 Blackberry Tips

1. To move the cursor in a different direction, hold the Alt key and roll the trackwheel.
   
   
2. To type an accented or special character, hold the letter key and roll the trackwheel. When the desired character appears, release the letter key.
   
   
3. To switch to another application, hold the Alt key and press the Escape button. Continue to hold the Alt key and select an application. Release the Alt key to switch to that application.
   
   
4. To exit a screen or dialog box, press the Escape button.
   
   
5. To change an option field, hold the Alt key. Click a value.
   
   
6. To move directly to an item in an options list or menu, press the first letter of the item.
   
   
7. To select a check box, press the Space key. To clear the check box, press the Space key again.
   
   
8. To select a line of text, press the Shift key and roll the trackwheel.
   
   
9. To cut selected text, press the Shift key + the Backspace key. To copy selected text, press the Alt key and click the trackwheel. To paste text, press the Shift key and click the trackwheel.
   
   
10. To capitalize a letter, hold the letter key until the capitalized letter appears.
    
    
11. To insert a period, press the Space key twice. The next letter is capitalized.
    
    
12. To insert the at sign (@) and periods in an Email field, press the Space key.
    
    
13. To reply to a message, press R. To forward a message, press F. To reply to all, press L.
    
    
14. To move to the top of a screen, press T. To move to the bottom of a screen, press B.
    
    
15. To move down a screen, press the Space key. To move up a screen, press the Shift key + the Space key.
    
    
16. To turn on CAP lock, press the Alt key + the Right Shift key. To turn off CAP lock, press the Right Shift key.
    
    
17. To view sent messages, in the messages list, press the Alt key + O. To view received messages, press the Alt key + I. To view SMS messages, press the Alt key + S. To view phone call logs, press the Alt key + P. To view voice mail messages, press the Alt key + V.
    
    
18. To move to the next item, press N. To move to the previous item, press P.
    
    
19. To type numbers in a number field, press the number keys. You do not need to press the Alt key.
    
    
20. In the Calendar, to change to Agenda view, press A. To change to Day view, press D. To change to Week view, press W. To change to Month view, press M.