Disqus
Those who are curious and brave enough to dive deep into the BlackBerry operating system’s guts will be interested in hearing about this tool for accessing hidden engineering screens. It’s a pretty simple process.
- From the homescreen, hit Alt + Shift + H (or Alt + EACE on SureType devices like the Pearl, or Escape + tap top-left three times followed by once on the top-right on SurePress BlackBerrys). This should bring up an extended Help Me! screen.
- Take the values shown there (App Version including the bracketed value, PIN number, uptime since your last reboot, and how long you want your Help Me! screen replaced by engineering screens) and type them in the corresponding fields in the Thyth-o-matic Engineering Screen Unlock Code Generator. Do not close the Help Me! screen, since the code generated is specific to the uptime shown there.
- Type in the unlock code provided and voila, your Help Me! screen accessed via Shift + Alt + H (or otherwise) will be switched to Engineering Screens for the duration you chose.
Unless you know what you’re doing, you don’t want to mess around with what’s in here since there are some relatively low-level functions here that could seriously mess up your BlackBerry. However, it’s worth enabling out of idle interest or technical utility, as the case may be. You can see the internal temperature of the battery, check internal logs, memory usage, all sorts of stuff.
For those who are really hardcore techies, check out the algorithm used to generate this code, since the automated generator probably won’t last long online after RIM legal gets its rage on. Big ups to Thyth for putting this together.
[via BerryReview]
About The Author
Simon Sage
Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.
