BlackBerry Tip: How to easily lock your phone
Stop me if this sounds familiar: you put your BlackBerry in your pocket or purse and go about your business. A few hours later a friend calls you – or worse, an important business contact – and says “Did you know your phone called me accidentally earlier today? Boy, you really scream at your kids!” Yikes. Even worse is when this happens at 1am.
Stop me if this sounds familiar: you put your BlackBerry in your pocket or purse and go about your business. A few hours later a friend calls you – or worse, an important business contact – and says "Did you know your phone called me accidentally earlier today? Boy, you really scream at your kids!" Yikes. Even worse is when this happens at 1am.
Well, as you likely know, all BlackBerrys let you lock the keyboard to prevent such a thing from happening, but it’s a bit of a drag to initiate as you must scroll down to the appropriate icon to lock the keyboard before putting it away.
There is a quicker solution, though, which works with all BlackBerrys running version 4.2 software or higher, including the BlackBerry Pearl, Curve and 8800 series such as 8830 World Edition smartphone.
Your BlackBerry has a Stand-By switch at the top of the handset (near the power button). It might look like a speaker with a slash through it. Hold it down for a second and it will say "Entering Standby Mode," and your screen will go dark. Essentially this locks your keyboard until you press the Stand By button again. You will still get phone calls and emails.
Alternatively, you can press Enter and Alt on the keyboard at the same time and it will lock the keyboard. To unlock it, hold down the asterisk button and then tap the green Talk key. If this doesn’t work, you will likely need to first shut off the input language shortcut (under Options > Language).
Nice tip….that language shorcut was often changing the language by accident, and you could not type.Just putting the phone into the holder often hit theses keys. Now, hitting the alt and enter locks the keys..
That is not a good tip to hit the standby button.. personally I hate my blackberry being in standby, as it always annoys me when I click the pearl to check for mail, etc, and it appears to be turned off.
Since the day I got the 8830 I assigned the quick button on the side to be keyboard lock, so it's now a habit to keep it locked always when it's in my pocket – avoiding any unwanted calls made.
This also drove me crazy until I found two easy ways to solve it – even easier than the methods in the article:
1. I assigned the middle key on the front to be 'lock' instead of the browser (default)
2. Best of all for me because I always use a holster is activating the 'Lock handheld upon holstering' option. It is in security settings – general settings. Since I changed this option to 'yes' I haven't had one problem. To unlock when you take it out is handled with the thumbwheel or the * and then send button
Is there a way to close email other than scrolling to the bottom to close on the menu?
unlock blackberry 8700g: http://www.gsmunlocklabs.com/tmobile-blackberry-8700g-imei-code-p-206.html
Can’t turn off the key lock function I have a pearl flip and key lock is not needed
The scenario you described is very true. But it could be worse than the 1am call to your business-contact – you called Emergency number! This is even more likely when the phone is locked because the emergency call btn.
The standby button would affect incoming calls, wouldn’t it?
I recently seen a BlackBerry application called phonebasic (or maybe phonebasics) that provided a much better phone lock.
Very true, Jon. I got burned by the emergency call. Any details about phonebasic? where to download one? Thanks.
It is here http://www.ottafone.com/ Check their device manager http://www.ottafone.com/dm.asp for the phone lock functions. I also like their airless internet and lost and find features
There is a new application, it auto hangs up the emergency calls when phone is locked.
http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/5012/
Wow, how dare they do this? Any application that forces end an emergency call would be no-brain.
i recently downloaded the new5.0 version for my tour, i hate it! Is ther any way to remove the new ver and go back to my old ver.? Also i lost my lock button on the home sceen and now i have to usethe top left key, the lock option has gone away since i downloaded the new version? Any help would be greatly appreciated..
Ditto! I updated yesterday, and hate that I don’t have the lock icon on my desktop. Time for an IPhone finally.
I have a Blackberry curve which has the lock on the top which I have to hold down for about 2 seconds to lock it and it is a wonderful feature on the phone! It’s such a simple thing but in the past with my mobile phones I’ve not locked my phone and been on the internet without knowing which, back then, has cost me money!
I bought my phone from another person and I am not able to lock my phone. Is there an app that will allow me to lock my phone?