How to customize the sound profile settings on your BlackBerry Tour and other OS 4.6 and 4.7 BlackBerrys like the Bold and Storm

So you've given up on your old BlackBerry 83xx or 88xx series device and moved on to something better like a Bold, Curve 8900 or maybe the BlackBerry Tour. The old 4.5 OS (or even 4.3 or gasp.. 4.2.2) has been kicked to the curb, and now you have a bigger, more refined OS at your disposal in the form of version OS 4.6 (Bold / Curve 8900 / Pearl Flip / Curve 8350i) or 4.7 (Tour / Storm). You will notice some obvious changes in the look and feel. BlackBerry Messenger has been overhauled and the media is layed out a bit different (even more changes are slated for version 5.0 device software). It's all pretty straight forward in terms of use, but one area where the move up to 4.6/4.7 will require some adjustment is to the new Profile settings - or should I say Sounds.

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I was a "Profile Power User" of sorts on my Curve 8330. I had maximized my profiles, having each tweaked to my liking. I loved that I could have my Quiet profile with no sounds for emails while at work, Loud with obnoxious alerts for a night at the bar and Vibrate - where I knew 3 vibrations meant SMS message and 1 was an email. Now I have to say, when I first jumped to OS 4.7, I was completely thrown off by the changes in the Sounds settings. No longer was I able to change each profile individually, but I had to set my tones once and each profile would be based off of that. This can be seen as both good and bad, and mildy confusing. Now there is only one set of alerts to edit - no more changing the tone on four or more profiles to achieve the same effect. Learning to maximize these new Sound settings was a bit of a challenge for me at first, but once I figured out what I was doing, It made a bit more sense. Keep in mind that there are also Custom Profiles which let you take back your profiles and we'll get into after we check out the basics of Sounds. * Note: It sounds like in OS 5.0 the Custom Profiles menu item will be renamed to Edit Profiles, and in addition to adding Custom Profiles you will once again be able to edit the default ones individually. Thanks RIM! *

 

Prior to OS 4.6, this is what the profile screen looked like. You had the ability to choose a profile, or go to Advanced where you could edit each profile.

In OS 4.6 and 4.7, the Profiles setting has been replaced by Sounds. There are still multiple "profiles", but you only have one place to change the alerts as opposed to changing them separately for each profile.

Essentially the Advanced of the older OS has been replaced with the Set Ring Tones/Alerts. Here you have all of your alerts located in once place. You can no longer edit the default profiles and change each individually. Instead, you set the alerts once, and changing profiles adjusts the volume of those tones.

The layout looks similar - you have options for Ring Tone, Volume, Sound in Holster, LED, Vibration and Notify Me During Calls. Previously you would get to these settings by going to Advanced and editing each profile, now they all fall under Set Ring Tones/Alerts.

Using the old Profiles, you were able to set different tones, volume and vibration for each of the profiles (Loud, Quiet and Normal). So you were able to have different tones, vibration and LED alerts for each of these profiles. The main difference now in Sounds is that you will have one "set" of alerts for all of your profiles, meaning the alert tones will stay the same (you won't be able to choose different sound alerts for each profile) but the volume will change. For example, my Normal profile has no alert tone for emails, only an LED. Changing this to Loud or Medium, I now receive an audible alert as well as LED for emails. Likewise, there is no option to edit the Vibrate Only or Phone Only profiles. Previously, you could edit these and make changes. If you wanted a different number of vibrations for phone calls than SMS, you could set it up that way. In the Phone Only profile, you could set SMS alerts to have a tone as well. Now you are stuck with the default profiles and cannot edit them. At first glance the vibrate options for each notification would seem to edit their action on the Vibrate Only profile, but unfortunately this isn't the case.

The Silent setting does just that - all of you audible tones will be muted.

Vibrate Only will cause the device to vibrate for alerts. You cannot change the vibrations for each alert for this setting.

Setting to Phone Calls Only you will receive alerts only for phone calls- other alerts will be silent.

All Alerts Off will turn off all notifications on the device.

 

Some basic things to remember. All of your notifications now revolve around your Normal profile. So whatever you have set for ring tones and alerts (silent for emails, ring tone at volume 10 for calls, vibrate for BlackBerry Messenger) will all be the Normal profile. When you change to Loud or Medium, the notifications will use sounds (if selected) as well as increased volume.

The good thing is that all of these can be thrown aside for the Custom profiles. Here you have the options to tweak all of your profiles to your liking.

You could essentially create an entire new set of profiles, each totally customizable, that will let you achieve the same result as previous OS versions. You can set alerts containing different tones, as well as custom vibrate and phone only options. This may be the way to go for some users looking to better handle their notifications. You can jump right in to creating a custom alert and set each item to your personal taste.

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