I recently mapped the left-side softkey of my Blackberry 8700 to the keypad lock function, and I’m experiencing a startlingly big improvement on a daily basis. I had previously had that key mapped to the profile selector, so that I could quickly shut off the ringer when going into meetings, without fumbling through the desktop, down to the profile icon, etc. It took me this long to realize that since the Blackberry is not actually my primary phone (except in the U.S.), I wasn’t using that feature much. I do use the Blackberry daily for data (mostly email) all over the world. It’s a pity that I never realized this before!

Making the switch has revealed an odd quirk: If I press a key while the phone keypad is locked, I get a message saying: “Keypad is locked. Press * ‘enter’ to unlock.” Not very different from my older S40 Nokias’ unlock messages. This is a pain, however, since finding the asterisk and enter keys requires more attention on a Blackberry than on an ordinary 16-key phone.

Oddly (but more usefully), if I scroll the scrollwheel up from a locked screen, I get a different message: “Keypad is locked” followed by three clickable button options: Unlock, Emergency Call, Cancel. The default is on Unlock, which can be selected by clicking the scrollwheel.

It turns out that a quick scroll-up followed by a click is far simpler than a tap and two specific key presses. I learned quickly to unlock via the scrollwheel.

But why on earth are there two different messages in the first place?