What if your backlight continues lighting up?

It was all fixed, until it broke again. You might remember a few weeks ago when I solved the issue of my backlight lighting up at random. It was a pain in many ways. Not only would it eat my battery, but since the phone would unlock in my pocket it cause many pocket dials. Closing all open apps worked for a while, but a few days later, just after I had published the tip, the issue came back and then some. It was much worse this time, as it lit up every time I got a new email. What to do then? It was a huge problem, and so called for a drastic solution. I didn’t wipe my device, but I came very close. There are two ways of going about this. I went the first route, but if you don’t want to delete a ton of apps you can do it the second way. The problem there is that it will take longer to identify the issue. The first method will likely solve the problem right away, but will leave you with a longer diagnostic process. Method 1: Delete everything You did not misread that. I figured that the best way to fix the problem was to wipe my device and start over. I might still do that, too, but because I wanted to use my phone during the weekend I thought it better to just delete all third party applications. It didn’t take too long, since I didn’t reboot between each deletion. The only two applications I left were Pandora, which has been there since Day 1 and almost certainly had nothing to do with the issue, and Twitter, which I upgraded to the latest version. Once I upgraded Twitter and deleted all other third party apps, I pulled the battery and rebooted. Sure enough, once the device came alive I had no issues with the backlight popping on. This worked all weekend long, so I’m fairly certain that the issue is resolved. Now comes the diagnostic phase. Basically, I have to re-install all of the apps that I deleted. Many were free, and so are easy enough to re-install. For paid apps you can log into your App World account and re-download, or do the same in MobiHand. The key here is to evaluate after re-installing each app. If the backlight issue arises again, you know which app caused it. Method 2: Delete one-by-one If you have time on your hands and don’t want to delete all of your applications, you can remove them one-by-one. This will take a bit longer, since you need to reboot after each app you delete. But if you start with the latest app you downloaded and work backwards in reverse chronological order, you should be able to figure out which app is causing the issue. You can then go back and re-install the non-offending apps that you deleted. Clearly, the backlight issue is a fairly common one, and not an easy one to solve. I’ve googled the issue multiple times and have seen many different answers. After trying many of these to no avail, it was time to think big. It’s a pain to delete so many applications, but it very well might be the best solution. It’s the only thing that has stopped my BlackBerry’s backlight from lighting up every time I get a new email.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.