Monday, October 20, 2008

BlackBerry radio signal strength - good trick!

Did you know you can change the signal strength icon on your BB from bars to actual numbers with this keyboard short cut?

Try clicking ALT "NMLL" on your BB and watch the relatively uninformative bars change to real signal strength numbers. You should know a BB will stop synchronizing when the radio signal strength drops below about -106 to -108 dB. Anything below (well technically above) -85 dB is an indication of excellent radio reception.

More tricks can be found HERE

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Yet another nice application for the Blackberry. First to integrate ActiveSync on it ....

http://it.tmcnet.com/news/2008/11/05/3760392.htm

NotifyLink in Canada said...

First is not necessarily best. NotifySync will support Exchange 2003 and 2007, CommunigatePRO, Kerio and Zimbra. The special NotifyLink "overlay" installed on the user's server adds additional admin functionality to NotifySync.
NotifySync allows remote wipe and lock of the BB if lost and it overcomes the shortcoming in EAS that requires authentication credentials to be stored on the device in clear text!

Unknown said...

In that case ... time to tell the rest of the world and to make some noise about this new "Sync". And maybe some clarity about the price tag too? Because I think this is something many Blackberry lovers were waiting for and one will not sell it to much by just putting some vague message on one single webpage AND without any idea about the price .... People will be inclined to expect this to have about the same price level as Notifylink while I assume this will be a much cheaper (serverless) product (about 20$/year?).... Can be avoided by calling all license conditions honest and straight to all who needs to know... Most people just love to see a price written in stone, what doesn't mean that it cannot change overtime. And it will unload the job of the salesmen from all who's just calling for prices.

Another point that I think is weird, goes about the emailclient. If I have it right, NotifySync will, like AstraSync, make advantage of the native device app, for all EXCEPT email. Why is that? As a matter effect EMAIL is the most used app and it's the NATIVE device app and the ease of use what sets the Berry apart from every other Smartphone (including the I...). As an "Alliance" partner it cannot be that difficult to get some kind of SDK from RIM to work THAT issue out? Or am I putting it to simple now?

NotifyLink in Canada said...

The RIM OS SDK is one of the most highly guarded bits of code owned by RIM. There are hundreds of billions of dollars riding on the careful control and stewarship of this vital piece of Enterprise software.

Even Alliance partners who provide RIM with a powerful channel for selling BlackBerrys is not given "free access" to develop as they wish.

The reason a seperate email client is used is because of the desire for bi-directional synchronization achieved by a true client-server relationship. With a calender, you wouldn't want more than one or you'd get very confused. In this case you are merely separating your business and your personal email. You don't loose the functionality of the native client, you ADD the functionality of access to corporate email that is server based.