How to Get the Most Out of Your BlackBerry/iPhone/Smartphone

This week is How to Get the Most Out of Your Blackberry/iPhone/Smartphone Week!

Your smartphone can be an amazing productivity tool, or it can be the source of your demise. If you treat your phone like a PS3 by constantly playing games, or if you are always browsing the web, you are wasting the potential of your very clever piece of technology. Smartphones are capable of email, messaging, calendars, tasks lists, word processing, spreadsheets, and many other useful functions. It is your mini computer.

So what did you do when you first got your phone out of the box? You set it up with your voicemail message, added a few applications, and generally fooled around with it trying out all the cool features. My thought is that to fully benefit from your smartphone, you need to devote a solid chunk of time to sit down with it and learn all of its real functions.

If you do not take the time to set up all of the available settings, you run the risk of your phone not alerting you when you need it to, alerting you at the worst possible moment, loosing/deleting your data, or a variety of other very bad situations. Taking the time lets you tailor your customizable device to your particular needs. You are loosing on your investment in the phone if you do not take advantage of this.

Also, most smartphones have forums where people answer each other's questions about the phones. If there is something you think your phone should be capable of doing but you can't figure out how, just type a few keywords into your search engine with the name of your phone and the issue and often times there will be a solution. If you have the idea, don't let it just be "wishful thinking" and take a look.

I was a BlackBerry user before today when I got my new iPhone, so this week I will comment of the capabilities of both. Tomorrow I will explain how I organized the applications on my Blackberry and how I just organized my iPhone apps. Over this week I will also share tips on using your smartphone to-do list and calendar, and I will go over my favorite apps so far. As always, please feel free to comment with any questions or comments! If you are an iPhone user, please leave a comment about your favorite apps that you think I should try.