P is for Previous… Unless You Have A BlackBerry Torch 9800

peopleinboxes Since I received the BlackBerry Torch 9800 yesterday there has been one little change that is driving me batty. Its is not a huge deal but to me it is truly an mind blowing change on RIM’s part and I don’t know what to make of it. I asked a couple of friends who are also sporting Torch’s and they did not notice it until I pointed it out…

So you are probably asking what is (choose a crazy adjective) Ronen talking about? I am talking about keyboard shortcuts in the email and messaging application. For some reason RIM decided to swap around the functions of two of the most common keyboard shortcuts in the email app. I am not sure how many of you use keyboard shortcuts but I live off them.

On every other QWERTY BlackBerry until the 9800 you would hit “P” to go to the PREVIOUS (read older) email and “N” to go to the NEXT (read newer) email. On the BlackBerry Torch 9800 RIM turned the tables. If you hit the “P” (Previous) key you will be taken to a newer email and if you hit the “N” (Next) key you will go to a older email. Maybe this is what RIM meant by “Less an evolutionary leap, more of a triple axel”?

At first I thought my device had to be defective… For a long time I used to hate Viigo for having this reverse use of the P and N key until they changed it. They finally changed it before being bought out by RIM but now it is coming back to haunt me!

If anybody else has a chance to try this out PLEASE let me know if you found a fix. I have been having a hard time trying to remember that N stands for Previous… It reminds me of an old app I once installed on my old bosses computer that would constantly change letters while he was typing fast. Hopefully RIM has a fix for this fast. For now I am just trying to use the touchscreen to swipe left and right between messages. At least that has remained the same. Older messages on the right, newer messages on the left.

Out of pure curiosity sake. Do you use keyboard shortcuts in the messages application? Let me know in the comments.

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