Skip to main content

Make Your BlackBerry Work for You: Personalize Your Phone

Blackberry-your-own
Image used with permission by copyright holder

So you just landed a BlackBerry. Once the age-old sidearm of corporate goons everywhere, the BlackBerry is now equally essential for keeping your friends abreast of your latest late-night urban adventures, updating your zombie fiction blog fresh with new entries, or cutting contracts for the indie record label you run out of your basement. Whatever the case, you’re holding onto the digital equivalent of a crunchy new backpack, still full of paper display wadding from the store: It’s all about what you put in it. Confused about where to start? Here’s a quick list of steps to making your BlackBerry uniquely yours.

Visit App World

It’s number one on the list for a reason. Half the fun of owning a smartphone is the near limitless supply of apps that can turn your humble phone into a GPS tracking device for your workouts, cookbook, news reader, or gaming platform. Just point your phone to BlackBerry.com to download BlackBerry App World, if it doesn’t already have it. Need a shortcut to find the very best? We’ve got you covered. Check out our top BlackBerry apps.

Recommended Videos

March to the Beat of Your Own Ringtone

That stiff corporate ringtone will keep you out of trouble at the office, but you’ll also find yourself reaching for the phone every time some dullard with the same phone gets a call. Get your own ringtone. Since BlackBerrys accept standard MP3 files, you don’t have to pay a dime. CrackBerry.com has a great guide to setting up your first custom ringtone, plus an expansive library of freebies.

Wrap It Up

Sooner or later, your shiny new phone is going down. And unless you want a nice collection of battle scars from every fumble, you had better put some plastic between phone and pavement. OtterBox makes some of the toughest cases out there if you don’t mind the bulk, Seido offers great variety, and Speck makes some of the most stylish. You can snag a case from any number of online retailers for cheap, but we recommend buying in person to inspect the fit and finish – not to mention size – before laying down any money.

Snag Some Accessories

With protection squared away, perhaps you can afford to invest in any number of other useful BlackBerry add-ons. Want to talk without a hand glued to your ear? Consider a Bluetooth headset. Appalled by the thought of walking around with a headset on like the hired muscle at a nightclub? A Bluetooth speakerphone also does nicely when you’re in the car. Constantly tapped into your favorite Last.fm or Pandora station? A nice pair of headphones like Klipsch’s Image S4 make all the difference. ShopBlackberry offers a great one-stop repository of authentic BlackBerry accessories.

Switch That Wallpaper

New BlackBerrys come with some pretty sleek wallpaper, but after a few weeks, you’re going to get tired of looking at the same blue-to-black gradient. We once again recommend hitting up CrackBerry for a great selection of free prefabs, or getting more artistic by taking your own shot with the phone camera and setting it as your wallpaper. And nothing’s better for remembering your favorite pet, city skyline or significant other than plastering it all over your phone.

Load up on Multimedia

Your BlackBerry may have been designed as a phone, but right out of the box, it’s equal parts jukebox and portable television, too. Checking your BlackBerry manual will show you how to load the phone with digital music from your computer via USB cable: just grab all the Muse, Silversun Pickups or Ra Ra Riot tracks it can handle and send ’em over. But getting those high-def Sons of Anarchy episodes or all three seasons of Arrested Development over won’t be quite as easy. You may have to transcode video on your PC to a format the BlackBerry will recognize. BlackBerry Video Converter makes it easy.

Get Connected: IM, MMS, Texts, E-mail

Your new BlackBerry will walk you through setting up an e-mail account, and receiving text messages is self-explanatory, but sending MMS and IMs through the phone gets a little trickier. For MMS, make sure that you’ve updated to the latest version of the BlackBerry operating system, since some older versions don’t support it. Afterwards, make sure you enable MMS under your settings, which should give you the option to send video and pictures you capture as MMS messages. As for instant messaging, BlackBerry.com offers links to individual apps for every instant messaging client, but you can also download a single app, like IM+, that works with many networks.

Nick Mokey
As Digital Trends’ Editor in Chief, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team covering every gadget under the sun, along with…
BlackBerry rises from the grave: New 5G phone with a keyboard coming in 2021
BlackBerry Key2. Credits: BlackBerry official.

BlackBerry is the smartphone brand that steadfastly refuses to die. The presumed-dead name has been resurrected once again, this time by a new company called OnwardMobility. It will work with manufacturer FIH Mobile to create and sell a 5G BlackBerry Android phone with a physical keyboard, ready for a potential release in the U.S. and Europe during the first half of 2021.

You read that right: A new BlackBerry phone with a physical keyboard and 5G, running Google’s Android software, is coming next year. TCL Communications was the last company to produce BlackBerry smartphones. It did so under license from BlackBerry Ltd., which continues to provide mobile security services, but isn’t in the hardware business anymore. TCL let its license lapse in February 2020 when modern, Android-based BlackBerry phones became a thing of the past. Until now.

Read more
There’s another new Ultra phone coming, and we’ve tried it out
A person holding the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra may be the Ultra phone everyone’s talking about today, but there is another Ultra phone about to demand your attention. It’s the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra, and I’ve had a close look to see if it’s the Ultra that should get your money.
Asus makes other phones?

Asus is best known in the mobile space for its ROG gaming smartphones, and while they aren’t for everyone, they are clearly aimed at a specific type of person and are really good at what they do. The Zenfone series has lost its way since Asus decided to forget about making compact flagship phones, and go in completely the opposite direction. What's the latest version like?

Read more
OnePlus may launch a compact flagship smartphone
Close-up of the OnePlus logo on the OnePlus 13R.

OnePlus may be planning to release another entry into its OnePlus 13 range, and it may be substantially different to other mainstream smartphones. It’s potentially going to be called the OnePlus 13 Mini, and as the name suggests, it’ll be smaller than the OnePlus 13 and OnePlus 13R already available. Is interest in the "compact flagship smartphone" about to see (another) resurgence?

The latest about the unreleased phone concerns the camera, which will apparently feature two 50-megapixel sensors, arranged in a vertical “bar” module on the back of the phone. The main 50MP camera is likely to be joined by a 50MP telephoto for a 2x optical zoom. This comes from the Digital Chat Station Weibo account, a well-known source of information on unreleased mobile devices.

Read more