BlackBerry Storm Tips, Part I: Using RIM's First Touch Smartphone

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Kwik Keyboard

You can call up the on-screen keyboard by hitting the Menu button, but the faster way is to swipe your finger up the screen, starting at the bottom. When you’re done with it, swipe your finger down starting at the top of the keyboard. It takes a little practice to do it perfectly.

Easy Umlauts
Creating accented letters is surprisingly easy in the Storm. Simply tap and hold your finger on the letter you want accented, but don’t click it. After a few seconds, you’ll get an on-screen menu of the different accents you could choose with that letter. Click the one you want. This even works for calling up foreign letters (such as the Icelandic letter thorn) or symbols like the trademark symbol.

Lock it Down
Entering numbers can be frustrating on the Strom, since there doesn’t appear to be a number lock-but there is. Press down on the 123 button until a lock appears on that key. You’ll stay in number mode until you press another keyboard mode key.

Clean Out your In-Box
In-box getting crowded? You can delete contiguous messages by tapping and holding the first one and then tapping the last one. This will highlight those and the messages in-between. Go to Menu and select the option to delete the messages.

Super Sender

Want to view all of the messages from a certain person? It’s simple: tap and hold one of the message you have from that person. After a few seconds you’ll get a message that the phone is searching and then it will present all of that person’s notes in a row.

Ready for a Close Up
If a Web page is too small to read, you can zoom in on your subject by tapping the screen twice. You’ll get a close-up view. When you’ve seen enough, press the go back button to return to the normal view.

Shooting Basics
The Storm’s camera has 2x digital zoom. To use it, press the left and right volume keys. You can lock the focus on your subject before you shoot by pressing the camera button, also called the right convenience key, halfway down. When you’re ready to shoot, press it down all the way.

The Silencer
When you have the Storm locked (using the button at the top left of the phone), you can still change the audio mode in use without unlocking it. Simply tap the Mute button at the top right of the phone. You can alternate between vibrate and the standard ring.

Web Settings

If you don’t want to view the mobile version of a Web site, you can change how that site views you. In the browser, click the Menu button and then choose Options/Browser Configuration/Browser Identification. Set this to Firefox or Internet Explorer to fool the site you’re visiting.

Mega Mail
Read messages in a hurry by learning the swipes. When you’re in a message, swipe your finger across the message from left to right to go to the previous message, and from right to left to go to the next message. When typing a message, enter a space twice to insert a period and capitalize the next word you type.

This article was first published on SmartPhoneToday.com.