signal in your hands

One of our biggest gripes with BlackBerry OS 6 was those pesky home screen panels (or "views"). Using a trackpad device it was always a pain to stay on the panel you wanted and not randomly scroll to a different one. If you read our BlackBerry Bold 9780 review, you can recall Kevin went on quite a bit of a rant about just that:

I constantly find myself accidentally scrolling between views while attempting to open specific applications ... Namely, my main messages app is always the first icon on the screen, so when I scroll quickly to it, I end up overshooting and change to the next view. Over the course of an average day, I've been finding myself accidentally scrolling to the next screen anywhere from 15 to 30+ times a day ... I'm not alone on this one either. It actually makes me kind of mad that RIM released BlackBerry 6 without having the ability to go back to a simpler homescreen experience, either via an option to disable homescreen views or by providing an alternative theme that does not have the views built in. 

Well BlackBerry 7 brings the ability to disable the extra panels on the home screen, making many happy campers much happier. Totally something that should have been in BlackBerry 6 from the go but for some reason was left out. Here's how to do it:

1. From the home screen,  press the Menu key then choose Manage Panels
2. Uncheck the boxes for the panels you don't want on your home screen (All is default and can't be hidden)
3. Save and you're done. Welcome to a panel free BlackBerry!

For more tips on using your device be sure to check out all of our help and how-to posts. If you found a new tip that you think should be shared with the CrackBerry Nation, send it along to tips(at)crackberry.com.