DoItFast4U

"Backlight Timeout"

The backlight settings on a Blackberry have got to be some of the most limited I've ever seen. Here's the lot of them:



Don't bother looking for more, because you'll be wasting your time. There just aren't any more. As for the timeout, you can see the single setting available. You can select different durations, from 10 secs to 2 minutes. Yes, you read that right. The longest duration is 2 minutes. There's no 'n/a' or 'disabled' either; You have the choice of values from 10sec to 2mins and you must turn off that backlight after 2mins.

In additon, the backlight setting is effective always, and there's no method to tweak it per application, or even configure it differently when the phone is in use. I will be on the phone, talking away, and all of the sudden the display goes off. Undoubtedly due to Murphy's Law, this will occur no more than a minute before the person I'm talking to asks me for a phone number, address, or on the other side they give me a phone number or address and I need to type it into my phone. Usually you click the top button to turn the screen on, but note that the top button is also the mute button, so turning the screen on also has the fun side effect of making the person on the other side unable to hear you. That's always fun when you're trying to repeat what they said to make sure you got it recorded correctly.

Blackberry users get around this backlight annoyance by using a free utility called BBlight. I too attempted to use this app to solve my issues, but it doesn't. Although it does add more settings, it doesn't add enough. Seriously. Here's a screenshot of what you get with BBlight.



These settings look like they could add some much needed functionality, no? Well, they don't work as well as they say. For instance, I enabled 'On user activity'. When my backlight went out, I wiggled around the trackball furiously. The screen stayed rebelliously dark. Hitting a key does turn the screen on, but I like to try to use things that won't affect the app running, so the trackball would be the best option, in my opinion.

Also note that there's no new setting for backlight timeout duration. I'm still stuck with 2mins or less. With my Treo, I used to set the backlight to stay on, and then just turn it off manually. This gave ME the control of the backlight. RIM apparently doesn't believe I should have control of my own backlight though.

Current disposition: I like to have full control over my devices, including their backlights. RIM refuses to give me that control, so I still HATE Blackberries.

"Automatic Memory Cleansing"

Here's one of the worst features I have found yet. This is so bad, I can't believe someone else even thought of it, let alone implemented it. Most new users, like myself, had to find out about this feature the hard way-- We saw our SMS and call logs disappearing by themselves and wondered why. In my case, I was clicking around on the phone, so I assumed I must have purged my 'history' on accident and thought nothing of it. That is, until it happened again the next day, and the day after that. Finally, I went searching through forums and discovered the awful truth. This wasn't a bug, it was a FEATURE!

The Blackberry developers, in their infinite wisdom, put a setting on the phone that says anytime the free memory gets below XXX megs, start clearing out phone call logs and SMS to regain the memory. No, don't notify the user or cordially ask permission before doing it, just do it. No, don't leave a note letting us know it was done, just do it. Do it quietly, pretend nothing is going on, and when you get done, pretend like you were just sitting there idle. That's the gist of the code.

Hard to believe, isn't it? However, here's the proof:

sms & mms messages automatically deleting

SMS Text Auto Deleting on Blackberry Curve

Why does my blackberry pearl 8130 clear its SMS txt and call log?

So there you have it. The forum users accept this, even embrace this feature. Why? How could this feature possibly make sense? If any OS does something automatically, shouldn't the user have a setting to either disable it, or require a prompt before allowing it?

No need to answer that, it's a rhetorical question.

"Forced to use up your main memory quickly"

Here's one I couldn't believe when I first found it out: The Blackberry has very little use for an additional memory card. In particular, the latest devices have the ability to use Micro-SD cards which go into a convenient (not really) location above the removable battery.



Now, Micro-SD cards come in some decently large sizes, and you can get a 2GB one for less than $50. That being said, you'd think this would be a good addition to a Blackberry, right? Nope.

The simple fact: The Blackberry doesn't allow any applications to be installed and/or run from the memory card. Yep, that's right. Every app you install onto your Blackberry must be installed into its main memory, taking away what little it has to start with, and inevitably causing something known as the dreaded 'automatic clearing' feature I'll discuss in a future blog.

So what does that leave your micro-SD card useful for? Storing video and music, and possibly a document or two. You could also store pictures I guess, but with my 8830's inability to receive MMS and the lack of a camera, I'm not likely to have many of those.

So far, I've found the micro-SD card useful for ringtones and that's about it. I have a 2GB card, but in reality I could have used a 64MB card and been just as well off, since it's just about useless.