All of the latest BlackBerry smartphones run on BlackBerry 10 operating system. Many users have already tested all of its advantages and some are just planning to switch to the modern Blackberry version. Compared to others, Blackberry OS is relatively young and after several updates, there are still some users who struggle to understand all of the offered features.
In this article, we decided to look at some of the most useful features of BlackBerry 10 OS. Whether you’re just thinking about purchasing BlackBerry smartphone or is already an experienced user, keep reading to find something you for yourself.
1. Picture Password
Blackberry developers created a unique way to protect the smartphone from unauthorized access. Many people think that nowadays the best way to protect the content of the phone is finger scan. But there are a lot of stories on the Internet about people who were able to unlock someone else’s phone by putting their finger on the sensor, while they were sleeping or figuring out an image sequence by finger prints.
Picture Password works very simply. All you need to do is transfer a digit to a specific area on the screen. In this case, the array of digits is randomly generated each time, and each time the desired digit is transferred from a different place on the screen. Here’s an extra tip for you: instead of using the default images preset on your smartphone, use your own picture with lots of details.
2. Reading mode
A lot of Blackberry fans often mention their love of the BlackBerry 10 browser and its capabilities of the reading mode in particular. BlackBerry browsed allows its users to enjoy reading articles, blog posts, news etc. without advertising distraction. Now you can fully focus on text, which makes the reading experience more user-friendly. Reading mode also allows changing the font size, inverting the colors to make the page more readable in the dark and turn on the voice playback feature, which will read the page for you. But note that not all of the websites support the voice playback option.
3. Photo and video stories
The BlackBerry Story Maker feature by default creates “stories” out of the existing media files stored on your device. For some people “stories” seem to be a nice addition to the multimedia features of the smartphone, but others find it disturbing. If you decided to enable this feature, you can do it in the settings tab. There you can also set up the way the criteria by which the stories will be created, for instance, geographic location, date and so on.
4. Add a shortcut to the home screen
Perhaps you have a favorite website that you visit very often and you don’t want to open the browsed each time for this. Add a shortcut to the main screen of your smartphone and you’ll have an instant access to the site. Plus it can be done very easily and quickly: click on the drop-down menu icon and select “Add to Home Screen”. Unfortunately, you might end up with not that pretty icon, but in this case, just use an app to created beautiful icons.
5. Activate silent mode without pressing any buttons
If you flip your smartphone and lay in on a horizontal surface the way when screen faces the table, the silent mode will be automatically activated. This is very simple and useful feature, which does not require any extra adjusting or moves. By the way, you can reject an incoming call the same way.
6. Keyboard shortcuts
The BlackBerry 10 operating system allows users to create their own customized keyboard shortcuts, which are incredibly useful. The settings are so flexible that you can open, for example, a message for a specific contact by using a shortcut. To create new shortcuts go to Settings → Shortcuts and Speed Dialing. After that, you’ll need to find a key without an assigned shortcut or edit one that already has a shortcut. You can assign a key combination to enter a specific word, symbol, or even a sentence, which is very helpful when communicating via email.
7. Backup your data
Even though we love our BlackBerry smartphones, we value the data stored in it even more. Hundreds of contacts, email addresses, passwords, social network accounts, work and personal documents would – it would devastating to lose it all at once. But Blackberry developers care enough to create a special back up feature called BlackBerry Protect, designed to ensure that your personal data does not get lost forever. It copies all contacts, messages, browser bookmarks and much more and stores it in a cloud service that only you can access. Here you can also remotely delete data from a lost smartphone so that attackers do not use it.
8. Word suggestions
Word suggestion is one of the main features of BlackBerry 10. It allows you to significantly increase the speed of typing, regardless of whether you use the Z-keyboard or prefer a physical one. During the typing, the option for the next word in the sentence will be shown in a tab above the keyboard. In addition, the system is capable of training and adapts to the personal style of the user. This means that after entering the first letters of the word, you will be offered a word that you often use. Plus the system automatically puts commas and spaces.
At first, you will have to manually enter unfamiliar words to the system. But after a couple of times, it will learn to recognize them and will offer options based on your personal writing manner.
9. BlackBerry Balance
One of the features of BlackBerry 10 is BlackBerry Balance, designed for users who use the same communicator for work and personal purposes. BlackBerry Balance provides a unique integrated system for using the communicator while connecting to your corporate IT infrastructure and your personal space.
Use BlackBerry Balance to achieve a balance between work and personal life. Choose for yourself a certain time, to which you completely disconnect the workspace of your communicator, in order to be sure to keep yourself from checking the email and other working needs. From the top panel of the start window, you can bring up a menu in which you can simply temporarily disable the entire working area of your communicator.
10. Blackberry Hub
Another great BlackBerry 10 feature is the BlackBerry Hub. A place where you will find all your notifications, whether it is email, message, Twitter, Facebook and more.
Unlike other operating systems where the notification center is just a list of notifications and you need to go directly to the application to work with, the BlackBerry smartphone owners can access many applications without leaving the BlackBerry Hub, which makes it more efficient, when we need to respond to messages.
