How to wipe a Blackberry

On Friday, I cut all my ties to RIM and its Blackberry product line. Despite their complete disregard for the Mac population, and the fact that they wasted their significant lead by stagnating instead of innovating, they definitely changed the market. RIM made email a killer app, and provided me with a viable alternative to the suck-fest that was Palm (talk about wasting an advantage).

I sat in line at the 14th St. Apple store for roughly 5 hours on launch day with Tom, and am now the proud owner of a white 16gb iPhone. I could go on about why I waited for the 3g model, or why I don’t buy rev. A Apple products, but that’s not what this post is about.

Here’s how to wipe or erase your Blackberry handset.

One of Blackberry’s strong suits is its attention to security. Enterprise customers have a “remote wipe” feature where if a handset is lost, the mothership can send out a “burn notice” on all sensitive data the handheld might contain.

What this does is trigger a function that every single Blackberry, including the consumer devices, has. There are two ways to do it. The first is to lock the handset, and then try to login using incorrect credentials 10 times, followed by entering “blackberry” at the final prompt. The second, less annoying way is like this:

Go to Options, then Security Options, then General Settings. Once you are on this screen, hit the menu button, often referred to as the “Blackberry button.” On my phone, it’s the key with the “dot cluster” logo, left of the scroll ball. Hit that, and now select “Wipe Handheld.” Check the “include third party applications” box if you want a complete wipe, and then hit continue. You will be prompted to enter “blackberry” just like with the first option. Jump through that hoop, and you’ll initiate a 20-minute full system wipe including contacts, passwords, and everything that doesn’t ship with the handset. Make sure not to take out the battery while this is happening, or the sky will fall. I recommend plugging it in during this process.

Now your phone is ready to sell!