How Do You Use Your BlackBerry Series: Dial from Home Screen On or Off?

Yep, dial from screen is handy to me. Typing in a contact's name from the homescreen is the most convienient.

I keep it off so I can use the keyboard shortcuts from the home screen. When I need to dial a number not in my contacts I just hit the call button first and then dial.

i use Quicklaunch

maybe people who call a lot like it on.. to skip pressing 1 button !!

but i love the shortcuts :P

Even if you turn this feature to OFF you can still set a Speed Dial for the shortcut keys!

It's the difference between a "tap" and a "press" of the key.

I have the majority of my contacts set up to dial right from my home screen. And unlike a regular cell phone i can program each person to a different letter and not just the numbers 1-9. It makes calling people so much easier. And why do I need to use the keyboard to jump to apps when I have QL.

I looked around and my 8100 has no such option. I guess it's because shortcut keys wouldn't work on a 2-letter per button keypad. Except for Speed Dial which works fine. Unless I'm missing something.

Storm owner here.

i use speed dial a lot.
i always call the same people.
and i think the shortcuts are more useful than dialing from home screen.

I have dial from home screen turned OFF. And when I'm doing handheld training sessions with my customers I always encourage people to turn it off.

The benefits of the multitude of shortcuts FAR outweigh the loss of dialing right from home screen.

The shortcuts are awesome. When I want to dial I press the SEND button and type name/number, voice dial or one-touch dial.

In fact in the Calendar I disable "Enable Quick Entry" as well allowing me to press "M" for month, "W" for week, "A" for agenda & "D" for day. Additionally it gives you "T" for today, "G" for go-to "C" compose new appt, "P" for previous & "N" for next.

Mine is set to off. Like using the shortcuts. Plus quicklaunch makes everything much easier. :-)

It's a lot easier calling friends or family by pressing and holding down a letter assigned to them. Especially when they have multiple numbers. I assign a letter for each of the numbers I use most (home, cel or office).

Off, for the shortcuts (especially using Q to cycle between vibrate and the active profile. My 8310 didn't have that function, and it came back on the 8900. Prior to the 8310, I had never had a phone, Blackberry or other, that didn't have a one-button way to put the phone into silent).

I don't even show that option??? Is this only under .607? I am using .517 w/Hybrid .591.

I use the voice dial feature, speed dial, all shortcuts, got dab good BlackBerry...Bold style!

We need to expand the poll. Storm users have no option to dial from the home screen (obviously, as we have no hard keyboard).

At the very least, please include an edit to the survey so that Storm owners don't start getting seriously confused.

Love using the shortcuts and being able to take messages,sms,calendar, and contacts off of the home screen freeing up space for apps that don't have short cuts(i don't use quick-launch

There is almost no difference to me having to press the call button before searching for a name when at the home screen

I would go crazy without the shortcut keys.

more handy for me to use the built in shortcut keys when this feature is turned off. in conjunction with QuickLaunch, you can't go wrong with shortcuts.

Thanks to this article. Holding down A locks the screen and Q switches from vibrate mode to normal and back! Never knew that before! (Always just used K to lock and F to bring up the profile menu.) I leave it off because I'm a shortcut fiend. And I worry about my berry ball dying on me.

thanks Crackberry for making my phone even better then it was before. Seriously I never knew that I could turn that function off and get way more functionality out of the device. Yes I know I should read the manual but it's way more fun finding out this way..it's like I have a new phone :)

Nope.

I like to use shortcuts. The use of Quicklaunch helps alot too.

all of these little tidbits of info have come in handy on the past can you please explain what is a Level 1 Messages I have allocated a specific tone to alert me if I ever get one, but in the almost 2 years of owning my 8330 I have yet to receive one. Thank you

Oh yea! I'm def dialing from the home screen...that's the only way to go

I don't use the keyboark shortcuts for apps, and I use pocket informant for my PIM, so typing in the name from the homescreen is a lot quicker than going into PI and running through the menus.

Seriously...how hard is it to press the green button to bring up the phone app? The massive loss in functionality from having it ON is amazing, I can only imagine that people don't turn it OFF only because they don't know they CAN turn it off and what they get by it being off.

Not only does it allow me to access my most used apps via a shortcut, it also allows me to put non-shortcut apps onto my homescreen bottom banner to avoid ever having to access the app screen for most of my common tasks. I also use QL and QSMS for even greater functionality.

I used to us it, but I turned it off to use the QuickLaunch shortcut. its just one extra button to push and gives me that extra millisecond to decide whether or not I really want to call home. ive got Jekyll and Hide picking up the other end of that phone and to be honest, sometimes she scares the HELL out of me.

Just press the green phone and start
typing a name or number on the line...
your address book will autoquery.
Crazy to give up so much functionality
just to avoid pressing 1 key. It's all
the same after that...

you know how short is shortcut and long is speeddial contact. I have my dail from home screan on but I use the q shortcut all the time. I wish that if you held down the shortcut buttons long it would work and it would be the best of both worlds. so to dial a contact just type the persons name and if you wanted to open the browser or bbm just hold it down. please send my royalty checks paybe to cash.

I use pretty much every keyboard shortcut to launch built-in apps. That way I can save theme slots on the homescreen for other apps without keyboard shortcuts. The people I call most often are on 1-key speed-dial, and anyone else I just hit the call button and start typing.

I didn't even realize there was a choice for this. By default, mine has been set to on... which allows me to accidentally call people when I forget to lock my phone and put it in my pocket. I also didn't know that there were shortcut keys to BBM, Contacts, Browser, etc. I will definitely have to turn it off for awhile and see how I like it.

OFF. I made my own theme so I can add more shortcuts.

Thanks to this I decided to change and not use dial from home screen.

It's the Best way! Love the keyboard shortcuts & QuickLaunch

I love the shortcuts and my theme has the $ shortcut for SMS! Most people I call are also speed dialed. I don't mind the 1 extra key to get to dial a number.

I have it on.

I learnt about home screen keyboard short cuts on this forum. Obviously this poll will let many users discover this great feature. Thank you!

I was never truly addicted to BlackBerry until I discovered the shortcut keys by turning off dial from homescreen. It just makes sense to make use of all those keys. It opens up the homescreen icons for other apps. It does take a bit of getting used to, remembering the shortcut is there. I'll never be able to enjoy a storm or pearl now. Full qwerty or nuttin!

I am quite surprised by these results, since Dial from Home Screen OFF is a setting for power users, and I was under the assumption that most BB users are power users ;)

ON BABY ON !!

yes for me!

Dial from home screen "on" for me. QuickLaunch and themes cover fast access to the apps I need, and frees up most of the keypad for speed dials. Best of both worlds!

I maybe make 2-3 calls a week. I use the phone for everything BUT to make calls. I love the shortcuts.

It's far better off as stated in other posts. And one thing that hasn't been mentioned about the shortcuts is that when dial from home screen is set to off, all the apps that have shortcuts will have an underlined letter in its name so you know which key to press for the corresponding shortcut. In no time you will learn them all, trust me that they become second nature in no time.
unless you only use your BB for phone calls, I don't see how dialing is priority one on these devices. Do you honestly make more phone calls a day than sending messages or composing emails? If so you're using the wrong phone.

Once I discovered the keyboard shortcuts there was no turning back!! I have all my icons sorted out in different folders through out my screen, and rolling around clicking and accidentally entering the wrong folders and having to come back out was frustrating at times. Its soo sweet to have a single keystroke take you directly to your program and functions instantly.
N=BBM
Y=yahoo mssenger
I=AIM
G=Google Talk
M=mail
U=calculator
O=Option screen
X=Windows Live
A=address book
S=Search
T=tasks
L=Calendar
P=Call log
...and I use them all ! None of which intereferes with speed dialing if you have numbers set to any of those keys. Long hold to speed dial, short tap for functionality. Its been the best discovery for me since ALT+Left Shift+ H !!!

All the apps I need are usually open so I just use ql and sms n email folders are on screen so you just need to select,

i have mine set to no ,when i did carry it in my pocket it cut down on false calls .I kinda like it on no anyhoo now even tho its in a holster now . :p

I dont have the option... :(

When I found that I could turn dial from home screen off, I jumped at it. At first I didn't like having to hit the send button before I dialed, but now that I have learned all the keyboard shortcuts, there's no way I could ever go back. They're really easy to learn and the letter is actually underlined on the app that it goes to. Eg. in Calendar, the l is underlined.

I would recommend trying it before you knock it. Give it a good 3 day trial.

The green dial key is for starting the call after dialing the number, not before. This ain't no household cordless phone.

I used to have dial from homes creen turned on, but then I discovered shortcuts, like W for BeWeather etc. And besides, I usually use voice dial anyway :)

Ever since my first BlackBerry about 3 years ago I've always had it set to yes and found it convenient. However, after reading this I tried setting it to no and so far I'm actually liking the shortcut keys. Dialing is only 1 extra press. I don't know why I never bothered with this before!

It was On until I saw this survey, it is now Off. I have a data only plan, I don't want to dial by accident at 45¢ a minute!

Dial from home screen is off. I have no need to dial a number to call... only texting will do.

I've tried the "off" option in the past. Worked fine, but somehow I lacked a shortcut to the adress book. No prob when you want to call an existing contact, but when I wanted to add a new contact I thought it was horrible... So I turned it "on" again and never tought about it again. After reading this poll I switched back. After some google actins I found I had to set the language to English (instead of dutch....livin'in The Netherlands and all...). Works like a charm. Somehow I now do have an shortcut for Adress book (and even Compose and BBM). I love it. And nice side effect: menu items are much more self explainatory now, as the dutch translation is horrible....

Feels like havin'a new phone :)

...on my 9550. Is this some MORE VZW BS!!?!?!

Can't believe I didn't know about this until now. Immediately turned dial from home screen to get the shortcut keys.

Option not available for the Storm, so I don't use it.

I like my shortcuts and speed dials, but also, since it's a bar phone, I like to take an affirmative step to start dialing.

Has been off for every BB I have used. I like the k/board
shortcuts. Besides, it is ONE extra keystroke - phone key and dial.

Mine is on. I have the letters setup as speed dial numbers. I don't mind scrolling around for my apps.

Novice BB user here. Thanks to all the comments, I deactivated the Call from Home Screen and, so far, I like the change.

Is there any way to re-map the native shortcut keys or at least to de-activate the ones I don't want? Hard to imagine that many would appreciate having shortcuts for Aim, Gtalk, YMsgr, et al, at the same time.

Thanks,
Yitz

I didn't even know this existed. I pressed 'N' and I may be in love already. It's like a brand new phone.

I've always kept it off and used the shortcuts for all the reasons others have already stated. Besides, it's easier in a panic to hit the end key (to go to the homescreen) and access the calendar, an im app, messages, or whatnot. I tried dial from home screen and will say that it's intuitive in one sense: it's not really necessary to access im apps (if they're left on) when one can start dialing from the home screen, thereby accessing a contact that way and initiating any type of communication by pressing the menu button. Dial from home screen actually prevented me from constantly looking at buddy lists to see who is on line, for example, and that made me more productive. But even so, I found it more of a pain to scroll around and look for basics like the calendar, tasks, and the memo pad. Furthermore, "s" is a shortcut for universal search; with dial from home screen off, all I have to do is press "s," and I can find any contact fast.