-Blackberries are still some of the most popular and consumer-friendly phones available.
But if you have a Blackberry phone, you know that they tend to slow down and give you serious lag when doing things like browsing the web or text messaging.
I'm Sharon Vaknin from CNET.com, and today, I'm going to show you how to make your Blackberry faster.
One of the biggest reasons your phones slows down is because
Blackberries are stocked with very little memory, not storage space, but the actual RAM that keeps your programs running.
Since you can't just add more memory, I'll give you some tips on how to optimize what you have.
Every Blackberry model is different, so check your manual if you can't find the setting or option that I mention in this video.
Let's start with some housekeeping to rev up your phone's interface.
In the Home screen, hold down the ALT key and type LGLG.
What looks like a bunch of jargon is your Blackberry's Event Log.
All of your actions are recorded here.
It can be useful for some, but it mostly robs you of memory and slows your phone down.
So, in this screen, hit the Menu button and select Clear Log.
Since you can't turn logging off, do this at least once a day.
Another thing you should be doing often is closing applications that are running in the background.
Press ALT and Escape to view active applications.
Select an app, and use the Blackberry Menu button to exit.
Now, let's turn on Automatic Memory Cleaning.
With memory cleaning on, your phone will automatically clear your cache and delete idle information stored in your phone's RAM.
Go to Setting, Options, Security Options, and select Memory Cleaning.
It's disabled by default, so let's enable it.
Okay.
We all know that browsing on a Blackberry can be pain.
That's because when your phone loads things like images, animations, and complex formatting,
it stores this data in the cache, and the cache is housed by the RAM.
So, let's tweak some settings to speed things up.
Websites with the Java elements and other bulky things, like tables, will slow your loading time.
So, let's turn those off.
Open up your Browser, select the Menu button, scroll down to Options, and select Browser Configuration.
Deselect Java Script, HTML Tables, and use Background Images.
And while you're here, make sure your Browser ID is set to Blackberry.
This tells the websites your surfing that you're using a Blackberry, and the pages will be reformatted for your screen.
Now, there are just a few more settings we need to change.
Back in the Browser Menu, select General Properties.
By default, webpages are displayed in a desktop view.
So, you have to scroll horizontally to view the entire page.
This can be a huge waste of time.
Lucky for us, this default can be changed by selecting Column
under the Default View option.
Webpages will be formatted to the width of your screen.
The nice thing about this is that if you're surfing the web and would like to see a page in a regular desktop format, just click Z and it'll revert back to that.
Blackberry isn't perfect, but things like this make me happy.
Alright, let's go back to the General Properties menu.
Find the Image Quality setting.
Even if you're browsing on 3G or, even worse, Edge, images will slow your browsing down
to a crawl.
All of the Facebook photo lurkers, myself included, know exactly what I mean.
So, change the image quality to medium or low.
The lower the image quality, the faster the page will load.
You can always change these settings even while you're browsing.
So, if there's a really pretty photo you'd like to see in a higher resolution, change the image quality to high.
Just remember to set it back to low or medium when you're done.
And the last setting to modify in this menu is Repeat Animations.
The default is 100, so change it to 10 times.
If there is a gift or an advertisement with motion, you're Blackberry will only loop it 10 times.
With these settings in place, you'll notice your browser speeds up a lot.
Okay CrackBerry users, I know what you're thinking.
What about my text messages?
Blackberries can take a lot of time loading message folders and individual
threads.
The most logical explanation for this is that your phone saves all of your messages.
So, every time you open a thread, it has to generate the entire history.
Here's one thing you can do to speed things up.
In the Messaging screen, select Options, then General Options.
Change Keep Messages to 15 days.
Messages older than 15 days will be canned.
And last of all, here's a weekly assignment.
While your phone is on, pull out the battery.
Leave it out for about 30 seconds, replace it, and turn your phone back on.
This will clear the memory and seriously speed things up.
To see a written version of these instructions, visit our Dialed In blog.
For CNET.com, I'm Sharon Vaknin, and I'll see you next time.
