Fix My Berry

To turn on Wi-Fi, perform the following steps:

• At the Home screen, press the Menu key.
• Scroll to the Manage Connections icon and press the trackball.
• Scroll to Wi-Fi and press the trackball to place a check mark in the box to turn on Wi-Fi.

Scanning for and connecting to available networks

To scan for and connect to available networks, perform the following steps:

• At the Home screen, press the Menu key.
• Scroll to Set Up Wi-Fi Network and press the trackball.
• Scroll to Next and press the trackball.
• Select Scan for Networks. The handheld scans and displays available networks.
• Scroll to the desired network and press the trackball to connect.

Adding a new network

To add a network from the available networks, perform the following steps:

• At the Home screen, press the Menu key.
• Scroll to Set Up Wi-Fi Network and press the trackball.
• Scroll to Next and press the trackball.
• Select Scan for Networks. The device scans and displays available networks.
• Scroll to the desired network and press the trackball.
• At the Save this Wi-Fi Network as a Profile anyway? field, ensure Yes is selected.

To add a network manually, perform the following steps:

• At the Home screen, press the Menu key.
• Scroll to Set Up Wi-Fi Network and press the trackball.
• Scroll to Next and press the trackball.
• Scroll to Manually Add Network and press the trackball.
• Type the network name, and then select Add.
• At Security Type, press the trackball.
• Scroll to one of the following options and press the trackball:
  • No Security
  • WEP
  • Pre-Shared Key (PSK)
  • PEAP
  • LEAP
  • EAP-TLS
  • EAP-FAST
  • EAP-TTLS
  • EAP-SIM
• Scroll to Connect and press the trackball.
• At the Save this Wi-Fi Network as a Profile anyway? field, ensure Yes is selected.

To edit saved networks, perform the following steps:

• At the Home screen, press the Menu key.
• Scroll to the Manage Connections icon and press the trackball.
• Scroll to Wi-Fi Options and press the trackball.
• Scroll to a network and press the Menu key.
• Scroll to Edit and press the trackball.
• Edit the network name, SSID, security type, and any other information as desired.
• Press the Menu key, and then select Save.

To locate the MAC address, perform the following steps:

• At the Home screen, press the Menu key.
• Scroll to the Options icon and press the trackball.
• Scroll to Status and press the trackball to view the WLAN MAC address.

If you are a new BlackBerry owner, or an old owner experiencing low battery issues, read through these tips:

First of all, modern BlackBerrys come with Lithium-Ion batteries, or Li-Ion for short. Some older models used Nickel Metal Hydride batteries, or NiMH for short.

MYTH: You do NOT need to break in the Li-Ion BlackBerry battery. Lithium-Ion battery do not require conditioning as you might have experienced with other cell phones and batteries.

• Don’t get in the habit of fully discharging the battery every time. Lithium batteries can be damaged with excessive deep discharges.
• When breaking in the battery, make sure you keep it plugged in long after the battery says it is fully charged (i.e. overnight).
• Lithium batteries LOVE to be topped-off. Plug it in whenever you have the opportunity and keep the battery life maxed out for those days you really need long battery life.
• Consider purchasing a car charger, or an office charger/cable. That way, you have more opportunities to top-off your BlackBerry battery.
• Searching for a signal will drain a battery quite quickly. If you must conserve the battery, turn the wireless or radio off.
• Keep your Bluetooth turned OFF when not in use.
• Keep your Wi-Fi turned OFF when not in use.
• Keep the backlight turned low or off whenever possible (rather than bright mode). A backlight setting of 60%-80% is wise.
• If you use instant messaging software, leaving it running in the background is a battery-killer. Sign off  and log yourself out when not in use.
• Big suprise, making a phone call made on your BlackBerry is the biggest consumer of battery life. If you make lots of phone calls for hours, then expect your battery life can be extremely short.
• Making phone calls in areas of weak reception will use up even more battery power.

What is running in the background of your BB? There are commonly 4-5 applications that will ALWAYS be running i.e. Messages, Phone, BBMessenger, Homescreen, and the Browser.

• Make certain that the browser is NOT on an active webpage (say with animated radar or a live webpage such as a news website that is constantly updating to the current news. Close it on the bookmarks page, which is static).
• Close any other applications that do not need to be running (like the camera or a game).

Not sure what going on behind the screen?

• Press Alt + Escape (the key to the right of the trackball) to bring up the Application Switcher and scroll through that list to see what is running in the background.  Close whatever is not neccessary.

This article was originally posted on BlackBerryForums.com and edited for content.

What kinds of files will a BlackBerry open as email attachments? What kinds of audio and video files will a BlackBerry play?

Here’s an update from Research in Motion (RIM) on which file formats are supported by current BlackBerry Device Software and BlackBerry Internet Service. Below are supported file formats assuming you have: 

• BlackBerry Operating System 4.5 (see my article on upgrading to 4.5)
• BlackBerry Internet Service 2.5 (this applies to your wireless carrier, not your phone)

Email Attachments

You should be able to download, view, and edit the following types of attachments in their native file formats:

• .zip
• .txt
• .html
• Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)
• WordPerfect (.wpd)
• Microsoft Word (.doc) [Word 97-2003, not 2007 (.docx)*]
• Microsoft Excel (.xls) [Excel 97-2003, not 2007 (.xlsx)*]
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt) [PowerPoint 97-2003, not 2007 (.pptx)*]
• Audio file formats (see next section)
• Video file formats (see next section)

* Ask your email senders who use Office 2007 to save their Office documents in Office 97-2003 format before attaching files to emails sent to your BlackBerry. 

Media Files

You generally should be able to play the following music and video file formats, although there are numerous parameters in the original conversion of the files that can be critical for playback compatibility and quality (see the original RIM knowledgebase article for details and exceptions):

Music

• ACC
• AMR
• MIDI
• .MP3
• .WAV
• .WMA 9 and 10

Video

• MPEG-4 (Part 2, Simple)
• MPEG-4 (Part 2, Advanced Simple)
• H.263 (Profile 0 and 3)
• WMV 9 (Simple)
• .avi
• .mov
• .3gp
• .mp4
• .m4v
• .mpg

Again, these are generally supported but with exceptions.

Reference

This information is based on RIM’s BlackBerry knowledge base articles KB15253 and KB05482. If you are converting music or video, you absolutely must read those articles.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length using the SMS portion of your service provider’s wireless network.

Short Message Service (SMS) is a communications protocol allowing the interchange of short text messages between mobile telephone devices, or to short codes, such as  “21212″ for using Twitter.

In order to use the SMS service Twitter you are first required to create a username and password with Twitter. Then, once you’ve found some people to follow, you’ll need to enable SMS updates in order for them to be sent to your mobile device everytime one of your peeps decides to let out a “tweet”.

Currently the SMS option for Twitter is disabled in Canada. See below for alternative options.

Quick SMS Commands for Twitter

Alternative Options (Click here for more info on the following applications)

• There are 3rd party applications available to download to your BlackBerry device, the most popular being Twitterberry or Tiny Twitter. These will install a software program to your device that will provide an interface for you to use to access Twitter. Other Twitter applications available are BlackBird and Twibble.
  • These applications will incur data usage, not SMS, so please ensure that your wireless service provider has set you up with a data package to prevent any data charges on your next invoice.
  • Keep in mind that any issues you have with apps will have limited or no support in regards to troubleshooting for your wireless service provider.
• Also, the final option would be to bookmark the mobile Twitter website in your favs, and then just log in to check out everybody’s updates. Again, this requires a data plan.

This is for all the parents out there…

SMS language or Textese (also known as chatspeak, txt, txtspk, txtk, texting language or txt talk) is the English language slang used in mobile phone SMS, social networks and instant messaging.  The objective of textese is to use the fewest number of characters needed to convey a comprehensible message.

Common Abbreviations

Follow the steps below to program the Dedicated Voicemail Number.

1. Press the Send key.
2. Press the Menu key and scroll down to select Options.
3. Select Voicemail.
4. Access number and Password will be displayed for programming the voicemail.
   • The access number should display automatically. If not, contact your service provider.
5. Press the Menu key and select Save.

Listed below are the keypad options which will help you navigate….

Press 2 to move up a message. Press 8 to move down a message. Press the question mark (?) to reply to all. Press period (.) to forward a message. Press the exclamation point (!) key to reply to a message. Press the comma (,) key to compose a message from the message list.

Check the following too:

1. Press the Alt key and 3, to view received message.
2. Press the Alt key and period (.) to view phone call logs.
3. Press Alt Key and 7 to view voice mail message.
4. Press the Alt key and question mark key (?) to view SMS text messages.
5. Press the back key to view all your message again.

Below are the features available. Here’s what the navigation pad can do:

Roll the trackball to move the cursor. Press 1 to move to the top of the screen. Press 3 to move up a screen. Press 4 to move to the previous item. Press 6 to move to the next item. Press 7 to move to the bottom of the screen. Press 9 to move down a screen.

Following are some Browser tips available on your Blackberry Pearl:

1. Press X to view the thumbnail version of a web page. And if you want to return back to the normal page, just click on any key.
2. You might find some banner in some webpage. Press the exclamation point (!) key to hide the banners.
3. Press 3 to move up a screen.
4. Press 9 to move down the screen.
5. Press 1 to move down.
6. Press the back key  to close the browser.
7. To insert a period(.) in the Go To box, press space.
8. To insert a slash mark (/) in the Go To box, press the shift key and the space key.
9. Press the back key, to stop loading a webpage.
10. Press 5 to open the bookmark saved on the webpage.
11. Press the question mark (?) to add a bookmark.
12. Press the period(.) key to go to a particular web page.
13. If you want to go the bottom of the screen, press 7.