A friend of mine found and sent me a copy of this awesome PDF of Blackberry 8700 tips. A person named “stinsonddog” on the Blackberry Forums site made it and even though it could be improved (ie, it would be nice if it told you little tips like how to install/save a custom ringtone or how to put files in your picture library and general stuff like that) I still think it’s a great collection of tips and I’m very grateful.

The author asks that if you find the PDF file helpful, consider a Paypal donation for animal welfare. I love it when people create content and distribute it free and ask for donations. I myself frequently choose to support work that way.

The items I really got out of this PDF were

• Setting default brightness to 30 instead of 100. I guess it’ll save on battery life but who knows what the exact differential is.
• Finding out that I could define my own searches and tag ALT- to them. That’s useful.
• Finding out that I could send free SMS messages to any number by emailing to @teleflip.com. Cingular blue is 10digit@mmode.com.
• ALT-Esc does something - and it’s pretty much the same as windows. Very nice!
• Finding out I can save a web page as a static element and email it.
• Making the phone wait longer before going to voicemail just by dialing a string. For mine, I wanted a 20 second delay of ringing before going to voicemail, so I dialed *61*+1###########*“*20# where ####… was my 10 digit number. I got an error on the phone, but it still seemed to have worked.
• ALT-CAP-H is a very cool / useful screen. I love these kinds of shortcuts.
• Nice to know there’s a soft-key reboot instead of normal take out battery routine. Haven’t tried it though… but will next time.
• I also haven’t tried it but it’s nice that the instructions for using the 8700c as a modem are spelled out. I have the Verizon broadband PC card so I’ll almost always opt for the 400-800K b/w thank you very much…
• Berry 411 - very nice indeed. I can’t wait to put it into action.