Luggage-Free: The Most Helpful Z10 Shortcuts

Working efficiently on a mobile phone is easier if you take advantage of its built-in shortcuts and time savers. These are the options I’m using most often on the Z10.
 

None of these are earth-shattering, nor do they need to be. Productivity gains often come from the cumulative effect of minor savings.

The multi-tasking swipe : Swiping up from the bottom of the screen brings up the four most recent apps, ready for instant launching. 

Browser bookmarks: These might seem old-fashioned in an era where many people use search engines as their main navigation tool. However, being able to jump directly to my most frequent pages saves a lot of time.

Word Substitution: A classic BlackBerry feature that fortunately remains active in BB10, Word Substitution lets you define series of letters that automatically expand when you type them. That makes it much easier to enter complex sequences such as HTML formatting codes. I use this constantly, and it works system-wide. Without it, writing would be much more fiddly and frustrating.

Random observations:

• I had assumed a flight from Brisbane to Perth would be on a plane new enough to include at-seat USB charging, but I ended up on the last active ‘classic’ 767-338 in the Qantas fleet, a machine so ancient it doesn’t even run to seat-back screens. Fortunately the battery held out through 5+ hours of usage — one key factor undoubtedly being that flight mode isa lot less power hungry.

• My accommodation in Brisbane was a serviced apartment with its own washing machine and dryer, so everything was easily washed and dried with no dramas.

Tomorrow sees me moving from Perth to Adelaide. Pie floater anyone?

Music by Tracky Birthday