I have had my 8830 for 4-5 months - woke up this morning and I was not able to unlock my BB. The letter "b" shows as "tg", the letter "n' shows as "rf" and the track ball shows as "qa"....has anyone had this problem? I looked in the docmenation but can not find a solution....

That often is a sign of liquid or moisture damage.

Thanks, but this device has not been anywhere close to moisture unless the humidity in the air was too high, but doubt it given I live in Austin, Texas.

Have you tried popping the battery out and in?

If a battery pull doesn't fix it then it definitely sounds like liquid or other damage in the keyboard. It's behaving as though pressing one key is triggering the circuit for multiple keys on the keyboard. That is a very good indication of liquid or other residue underneath the keys.

Sometimes it does not really have to get wet. My friend put his device in his pocket while working outside and got damp from perspiration and did the same as you are seeing.

I have the same exact problem today. The track ball and letters B, N, M are giving me the same output you are getting. No moisture damage I live in the desert. Seems odd that the same exact letters and output would be caused by moisture damage.

it probably is not moisture. Same thing happened to me, man and all you have to do is hold down Fn and Numlk together while toggle keys 'aint on. Good Luck!!

I had the exact same wrong mapping of keys as the OP. In addition, the Del key also pumped out a pair of chars instead of deleting, and thus Alt-Cap-Del did not perform a soft reboot.

The problem has happened at least three times earlier, though on all those occasions, Alt-Cap-Del immediately fixed the problem.

This time, even removing the battery did not fix it! It did finally snap out of it on its own, fortunately.

HOWEVER, I had owned this Curve for 9 months before it started happening, and I believe it MAY have started happening right after I installed Google Maps v3.0.2---though I can't be entirely sure, as it did not happen immediately afterward.

I had a different pattern--the <Num> key would activate <Cap>; <del> either did nothing or typed an "X", the 'B' key did nothing at all, but hitting <Alt> would give me either "b" or "!". A soft reboot fixed it.

I would like to know how it happened in the first place, but knowing how to fix it is at least second-best.

seems common as i thought only mine did it. it is definately a hassle. wonder if there is a fix.

Similar problems, replacing the trackball fixed it.

I found a solution to the keyboard malfunction problem which has not been discussed on any forum I have looked at. I apologize if this has since been added to this thread as I have not read it in a while. Unfortunately I am pressed for time, and want to make sure others benefit from my discovery. Sorry for the bad Netiquette.

As with many other people I was extremely frustrated by the fact that so many support forums had people who had tried all the solutions, but like me had persisting keyboard issues. So I took a day and tried EVERYTHING I could think of. These are two solutions that I have found to two different symptom sets. I have only tested Bell Blackberry Curve 8330s.

I have now tested these solutions many times on several different Curves. Note none of these phones responded to the other solutions: (Remove battery for 30 seconds, blow dust out of keyboard, preform soft reset, delete archived msgs, update OS, etc..)

Symptom set #1 - “Keyboard and side buttons not responding… only Track Ball scrolling (but not push selection) responding”



Solution:

This seems to be somehow caused by a function of the Scroll Ball locking out or blocking the input signals from the other buttons.

1. Turn off your phone by removing the battery

2. While battery is out of phone remove Track Ball

a. First remove the silver disk around the Track ball. This pops out easily with your fingernails
b. The ball will now simply fall out if you turn over the phone. (tap it if need be)
c. **take note of the orientation of each of these pieces so that you can put them back in the correct way. If you lose track of the way they came out, they will only go in the correct way…. Just don’t force anything.

3. With the Track Ball out of the phone, put the battery back in and power up the phone.

4. Check to see if the keyboard is responding. If it is,

5. Put the track ball back in the phone with it still powered on.

6. Test keys and trackball, it should be working now.


Note: that it is unlikely that this is simply a result of the battery being removed for more then thirty seconds. I have only tested this on Curves that did not respond to repeated attempts at “the 30sec battery pull”. Each time this worked on the first try.











Symptom set #2 – “Blackberry responds to Keyboard keys producing the wrong letters and pressing Track Ball produces random characters”



Solution

This seems to be caused by the Blackberry reading the battery as partially charged when it is almost dead. I was able to prove this by testing the battery using another device. Although my phone believed the battery to have some charge the battery was actually almost completely dead.

The solution is simply to charge the phone. All but one of the times I have used this solution the BlackBerry actually started reading the battery as dead immediately after being plugged in.





Hope this helps... sorry for the long post.



Jay-D McLean

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Is it on US English and not foreign English? A Swedish or German keyboard (in English of course) has all kind of different characters.

Dear Friends,

My instrument's keyboard and trackball was typing erratically and the trakball didn't click. Delete key wasn't functioning and i had a hard time typing the password too.

It was just this one day that i was working in heat all day with my phone in my pant pocket. Answered it occasionally during work and at the end of the day the phone was acting up. It got worse towards day 2.

Read a lot of entries and found that it must have been some moisture. So i decided to remove the trackball and clean up the inside with a cotton swab. Second, i decided to kill anymoisture if any by blowing in air with a hair dryer.

Hot, cold, hot and finally cold again. Remember not to shove the dryer mouth into the trackball cavity. Use your discretion and don't overdo with the heat.

Popped in the trackball, battery and there she was. Its running fine.