Fix My Berry

I’ve been asked many times “What is this icon?”, and over the phone some of the descriptions people will tell me are amazingly hard to decipher. So I’ve put together a list of different icons as they are shown on different devices, now these icons are for the default theme for blackberry’s, and your provider may have different default theme, or yours may differ completely from what is shown, but this list should give you a pretty good idea of what an icon is for.

Notifacations:
-These icons appear at the top of your home screen where the time usually is. I’ve taking a picture of that area encase your not familiar with it:

Message Notifacations:

	New Message
	New High Importance message
	New SMS (Text) Message
	New MMS (Multimedia) Message
	New Browser Push Message (usually a text message with a link to a website)
	New Blackberry Messenger Message

These Icons will have a number beside them indicating how many messages are unread. The Icons will also have a red asterisk (*) on top if you have recieved any new messages since the last time you went in to your messages folder.

General Notifacations:

	Missed Call
	Text telephone (TTY) is enabled
	New Voicemail

General Information Icons
This icons are found in the same general area as the notifacations, yet are not notifying you of a “New phone event”. Once again heres picture of that area encase your not familiar with it:

Signal Indicator and Type:
These icons are in the top right corner of the above picture, heres a cropping of the area:

	Connected to RIM, this icon only appears when you have a full data connection to the RIM servers, as well it will only appear when you are using 3G.
	This indicates you are connected to 3G, and have access to voice and data functions.
	These indicate that you have a FULL data connection to the RIM severs, and access to both voice and data services.
	All of these icons mean you have voice services, but no data connection. Note that with the exception of GSM, its safe to say if its not capital letters, you have no data connection.
	This is your signal indicator, 5 bars is the best signal possable, and 1 bar is the worst possable, while still being able to operate.
	This indicator appears when you are out of a serviceable area, also known as “No Service”.
	This indicator usually appears when you don’t have an active SIM card in your phone, or your phone is not active on a cell network (for those networks that do not use SIM cards). SOS appears because you will still be able to call 911 in emergency situations, but thats all. (Please do not test this unless you have a real emergency.)
	You’ll see this if the radio (also know as the antenna), is turned off. you might see this if your battery is really really low.

Other:

	This icon indicates that the Bluetooth function of the phone is turned on. if a blue dot appears to the side, that means theres a Bluetooth connection present.
	This is the Wifi Icon in both of its states.
If its White and theres is a wifi network name beside the cell network name, than there is a full connection, via wifi, to the RIM servers If its Gray and theres is a wifi network name beside the cell network name, than that means while you have a conneciton to the internet, some data functions may not work, emails and pins for example. these functions will then resort to the cell network. If its Gray and no network is present beside the cell network name, than the wifi is on, but not connected to any wifi network.
	This icon appears when you are roaming on a network other then your own providers.

Sending and receiving information:

	This icon appears in the top right corner of your screen, and means your berry is sending information to the cell tower.
	This icon appears right beside the top icon, and means your berry is receiving information from the cell towers.

I’ve put these two last for a reason, I want to settle a common mis conception. I’ve heard many customer complain even call me a liar when i say that these icons do not mean you are being charged for data. These icons simply indicate when your phone is communicating with a local cellular tower, this can be an incoming phone call, a Text message, data(yes the chargeable kind), OR simply checking with the tower to make sure its still with in range. I’ve tested and confirm this many times myself, including with a berry whose data was turned off both on the phone and on the mobile network, so there was no possible way for it to be using internet data, and the arrows still appeared.

You can see a longer, more device specific list offered by AT&T, remember this is for their default theme, so it may not match up to yours exactly, AT&T’s list

How They Work
Whether it’s handling simple phone calls or 12Mbps WiMax data, cell sites are organized with more or less the same flow:

• A cellphone or modem radios the nearest towers, saying, basically, “I’m here!” When you make a call or logon, your phone then sends a message via radio that’s picked up by the antenna array.

• A wire or fiberoptic line carries the call down to the wireless access point, connected to a multi-port switch.

• The call, along with many others, gets routed to a backhaul, usually down to an underground wired T1 or T3 line, but sometimes back up the mast to a powerful line-of-sight wireless microwave antenna. They resort to wireless either when they don’t have a ground connection, or when the ground connection sucks.

• The incoming call or data comes back from the backhaul and up through the switch to the antenna, where it then hits your phone wirelessly, presuming your phone is still communicating with the same site. If you are moving, then there’s a handoff-a new but more or less identical cell site transmits the data to your phone, once your phone checks in and says “I’m here.”

All of this happens in the blink of an eye.

The Gear

Clearwire, who gave me the tour of the cell site during my WiMax test run, is a new company, only just now deploying their network, one that is only focused on data, and not on voice calls. This means they don’t have a bunch of sites already established like other carriers (though their recent acquisition by Sprint may change this). But it also means their cellular gear is modern and compact compared to the others.

For instance, the carrier whose name probably starts with A keeps its gear in a bunker like the Endor moon one that Han Solo & Co. were trying to bust into in Jedi. The backup batteries must be enormous, because there’s a sign on the door that says, “Danger – Corrosive Liquids – Wear Protective Equipment.”

Clearwire, by comparison, has a high-school locker for its gear-one that is built somewhere else and just trucked to the location. You attach it to the on-site power, run lines and antennas up the mast, and either bolt the sucker to a cement foundation or to the side of a steel post, and voila, you are done. It uses two car batteries for its backup power-enough juice to last six hours and they don’t have to wear a hazmat suit to service it. (It can also run off of a portable generator.)

In this particular site, the carrier whose name may start with a V had a set of three larger lockers, not the huge bunker that its competitor had, but a serious array nonetheless. As you probably guessed, each carrier locks up its own facility, so I wasn’t at liberty to fully inspect the other guys’ gear-or even confirm their identities.

Clearwire also runs skinny fiberoptics up to the top of the tower, instead of the thick insulated copper cables that the old boys’ networks run. Again, this has more to do with newness than simple common sense, but it may mean cell towers could be a little slimmer in the future.

So what happens up top?

The real demystification was the antenna array itself. I for one did not know a lot about how things were set up, and now I know a tiny bit more, which I will share:

• The huge antenna masts can have multiple carriers, each with its own triangular platform and antenna array.

• The reason the platforms are triangular is so the 360-degree coverage can be split into 120-degree pie pieces, which-if you look closely-can be subdivided again into 40-degree slices for increased, pinpointed coverage.

• If there’s a white disk-shaped antenna among the array, it means that the carrier has a line-of-sight microwave backhaul. Clearwire’s can handle 80Mbps at the moment, but must be directly in line with another microwave antenna. (Speaking of fried nuts, I wouldn’t want to stand between two of those.)

data-mined from i.gizmodo.com