Blackberry phone with a broken joy stick - trackball

Today's post is a simple Blackberry cell phone information post. I looked online for a long time and could not find help with a Blackberry phone with a bad trackball joystick thing. The questions are online everywhere. People can go down but not up, or up and not down. What are the shortcuts on the actual Blackberry phone?? How do you get around on the dang Blackberry if your trackball is not working?? Can you replace a Blackberry trackball?

A few questions I had over the last YEAR!!

Blackberry Shortcuts

SO - Blackberry has a bunch of shortcuts listed that NO ONE would ever use!! But there are a few really helpful shortcuts I discovered and will share right here.IF you are like most people - the most important thing to know is how to dial, answer and text with no trackball.

To dial a call - just press the green phone button and you will be on the outgoing call page.
You can also just start dialing a phone number or a name from your home screen page and the phone seems to just know what to do. It seems to drop into the phone book or call from there.
The green phone - top left button is the call send button.

Need to be able to make a call. Got it!

Blackberry trackball is broken

What about texting?

I found you can start to make a call - the way I mentioned above - and instead of hitting the call button - green phone - you press the menu key and - if you can go down - SMS Text is an option. I found a way to text!
BUT - the bad news is - When you text, people usually respond by text! I had to figure out how to check text messages and not look like a bad person that might be ignoring you.

The SHIFT key on a computer makes letters capitol letters. The SHIFT key on the Blackberry is the bottom left and right keys. If you SHIFT and hit M on the keyboard it takes you to the MESSAGE screen and you can see your texts! But how do you go UP to the NEW TEXT?
SHIFT and T on the keyboard takes you to the top of any page!!

Life changing! hahahaha.....

Then i discovered something crazy. People are talking about replacing trackballs online. I hear how easy stuff is to do yourself all the time. I am a sax player and I find most things a little harder than "people" say!
But I tried it anyway! It just pops out and it really is as easy as changing a battery in a flashlight!

I went to Amazon and ordered 2 new trackballs for my Blackberry for 4 dollars - including shipping!

SO - Fix your own Blackberry trackball by replacing it with a new one - OR - find the few shortcuts you might actually need and work around it! Bottom line is this joystick thing is cool until it sucks

SAXBOY