FAQ: What is the BlackBerry “Help Me!” Screen & Why Do I Need It?

Help-me-screen The BlackBerry “Help Me!” screen is one of the most useful screens on the BlackBerry but every day I run into users who have no idea it exists. The “Help Me!” screen is one of the first places I go when I am trying to help a person with their BlackBerry and it should be something every user knows about. It still surprises me that RIM does not have a icon for it!

To get to the “Help Me!” screen follow these instructions:

  • Full QWERTY keyboard BlackBerry:
    • Press the keys Alt+Shift+H at the same time
  • SurePress Touchscreen BlackBerry: 
    • Hold the escape/back button and tap the top left, top right, top left, and top right corners of the screen sequentially
  • SureType BlackBerry Pearl keyboard:
    • Press the keys Alt+EACE at the same time

This will show you a screen with useful information like:

  • Vendor ID – Your carriers special code from RIM
  • Platform – The platform of the OS (Not the number most people reference)
  • App Version – The applications version (The number referenced by almost everybody)
  • PIN – Your devices personal identification code
  • IMEI or MEID  – This is your cellphones identification number to carriers
  • Uptime – How long your device has been on
  • Signal Strength – How strong of a signal you have (-90 is better than -100)
  • Battery Level – How much of a charge you have left
  • File Free – How much application space you have free
  • File Total – Total application space

Those numbers are crucial for diagnosing a device. For example, the biggest cause of emails and phone logs disappearing from your device is a lack of “File Free” space.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

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