10 Ways to Use BlackBerry Bridge with your BlackBerry PlayBook

BlackBerry® Bridge™ provides a unique way to connect your BlackBerry® smartphone and your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, opening up a world of possibilities and interactions. With BlackBerry Bridge allowing such a range of functionality, Ty from the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog and I thought we’d run through a few of the ways that you can use it to enhance your work, entertainment, sharing, communication, and more. With a variety of mobile devices at our fingertips, it’s important that they work together. Check out our top 10 ways to use BlackBerry Bridge with your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet below:

1. Extending BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) to your BlackBerry PlayBook

The BlackBerry Messenger experience on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet features an enhanced interface and solid functionality. If you’re using your tablet and a BBM message comes into your BlackBerry smartphone, simply pop open the BlackBerry Bridge folder on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and tap “BBM” to read it. I particularly find BBM via BlackBerry Bridge on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to be useful for viewing photos, voice notes, or files sent to me from BBM contacts.

2. Stay connected without Wi-Fi®

It’s a pretty connected world out there with Wi-Fi at work, home, coffee shops, and airports. When you’re on the move, however, it’s important to stay online without skipping a beat. Thanks to BlackBerry Bridge, my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet comes with me and remains connected the entire time through the wireless radio on my BlackBerry smartphone.

3. Access your smartphone email, calendar, and contacts

With the huge amount of services that we all use (how many email addresses do you have?), unifying access across multiple platforms is paramount. Back-end synchronization of mail, calendar, and contacts is a breeze with BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, but you also have the option to view your BlackBerry smartphone mail, calendar, and contact information on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet over BlackBerry Bridge on the client side. The perk of this feature is the ability to manage email accounts that you’ve set up on your BlackBerry smartphone on the larger screen and interface of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

4. Remote control using your BlackBerry smartphone

 

This one is a personal favorite hands down, and never fails to raise some eyebrows in meetings. By activating Remote Control within the BlackBerry Bridge app on your BlackBerry smartphone, you can gain full wireless control of your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet using your smartphone touch screen as a track pad and the keyboard for input. When presenting, you can even use the volume up and down buttons on your BlackBerry smartphone to control “back” and “next” functions on the slides being presented from your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

This feature is extremely useful for navigating through slides when presenting via HDMI. Walk around, pause for effect, and give a rich presentation all from your BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with no need for a laptop.

5. Share photos and videos

The high resolution of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet screen brings photos and videos to life. If I’ve snapped some pics on my BlackBerry smartphone over the weekend and I want to show a few of them to a friend in the office on Monday, I can easily use BlackBerry Bridge to pull them up on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Alternatively, gather the family around the TV at home, plug your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in via HDMI output, and showcase your smartphone or tablet photos in this manner. Using the slideshow function to automatically roll through your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet photos makes this an easy one to set up and use for sharing media.

6. Manage files that reside on your BlackBerry smartphone and media card

I often download attachments to the media card on my BlackBerry smartphone and use the file manager to keep everything organized. If I need to review a document or crack open an excel sheet and would benefit from a larger view, I simply use the File Manager on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to access my smartphone files. With the features of Documents To Go® on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, reviewing, editing, saving, and sending is convenient no matter where I am.

7. Centralize your task list across multiple devices

We all have our habits for staying organized and on top of our responsibilities. The Tasks application on myBlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 smartphone is my sweet spot for knowing what I need to get done on any given day or week. With Microsoft® Outlook® synchronization, it provides me with one space that is constantly updated. This consolidation of tasks extends to my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet via the Tasks application in the BlackBerry Bridge folder, enabling my tablet to join the circle of devices that I use to add, edit, and complete tasks. To learn more about synchronizing data on your BlackBerry smartphone, head over to theBlackBerry® Desktop Software website.

8. Open On PlayBook for a rich experience

With BlackBerry Bridge you also have the ability to open links, emails, and files directly onto the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Once you’re connected, you can simply hit the menu key and select “Open on PlayBook” from your BlackBerry smartphone. This is great for utilizing the ultra-fast BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser or for reading long emails that contain images or other media. Ty’s favorite use of this feature is to snap a picture using his BlackBerry smartphone and then quickly preview it on his BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Choosing which screen to display your content on is a fantastic feature and allows you to fully engage with what you’re working on.

9. Browse your corporate intranet and engage with web apps

If your organization has enabled corporate intranet browsing on your BlackBerry smartphone via a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server connection, this extends to your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as well via BlackBerry Bridge. Using the BlackBerry Bridge Browser, you can check out the web apps that your company uses, allowing you to enter expenses, check Salesforce data, or engage with workflow approvals on your corporate network from the crisp interface on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. This one saves me a lot of time when traveling and lets me skip the experience of having to wait until I’m back at my desk. (Missing the BlackBerry Bridge Browser icon on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet? Find out why!)

10. Charging your smartphone? That shouldn’t stop you from using it!

Sliding my BlackBerry smartphone into a charging dock doesn’t mean that I have to stop using it. When I leave it to soak up some juice, I just pick up my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and pick up where I left off via BlackBerry Bridge. As long as I stay within Bluetooth® range – which I don’t have a problem with considering the unfortunate size of my apartment – I can continue to interact with my email, contacts, BBM, calendar, and more.

BlackBerry Bridge has been designed to open up a world of possibilities through a Bluetooth connection between your smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The information that can be shared, access to files, extension of connectivity, and utilization of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet screen and interface can provide a real boost to productivity and allows freedom of choice to maximize your experience. It’s really a new way for smartphones and tablets to work together.

How do you use BlackBerry Bridge? Share your most frequent use case in the comments below!

Source: 07.11.12 Luke Reimer