If the time should ever arise where you need to reset your Blackberry you should always think in terms of your personal computer. A soft reset in the Blackberry world is similar to a “Control+Alt+Delete” in the PC world. Unless you are locking/unlocking your computer, “Control+Alt+Delete” typically reboots your computer. Power remains supplied to the hardware and the PC goes through a software reset – or “soft” reset. A hard reset is similar to just unplugging your PC power cord or pulling out your laptop battery.
The same types of resets apply to Blackberry devices. You can perform a soft reset or a hard reset. Be sure not to confuse a soft or hard reset with a “factory reset”. A factory reset in Blackberry is considered a security wipe and is beyond the scope of this post. When having troubles with your phone you should always perform a soft reset first. If that doesn’t work then perform a hard reset. Luckily smartphones are designed to survive through hard resets much more than a PC but because there are not so literally millions of moving parts it’s always best to avoid them.
To perform a soft reset on a Blackberry 9900 perform the following. Note that this same soft reset applies to most Blackberry devices manufactured in the past 5 years. So this will work on older Bolds, Curves, etc.
From the Blackberry keypad press “alt”, “Right Shift (Caps key aA)”, and “del” all at the same time.
The phone should “reboot”.
To perform a hard reset, just pull the back cover off while taking great care not to break it. Then pull the battery, wait 30 seconds or so (I never do), and put the battery back in.
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About Michael O'Coners
yehhh! New software adds plenty too. However, when stacked against the Android and iPhone competition it doesn’t quite do enough