Hoping you all are charging your BlackBerry devices and spare batteries ahead of time in the event of losing power in your homes.  Hurricane Irene is here, and may or may not have reached your area yet.  T-Mobile is offering some tips to customers during the storm:

• Use text messaging to communicate instead of voice calls. Text messaging has a greater success rate in getting through the network during high-usage periods.
• Keep your calls short in duration.
• Utilize Wi-Fi calling if your device has the feature. This feature takes advantage of your in-home data connection to place calls in case the cellular network is congested or down.
• Make sure your phone is fully charged prior to the storm. Consider obtaining a vehicle charger in the event of power loss.

BBM is a great alternative too is your friends/family you are trying to contact also have BlackBerry.  During the earthquake experienced a few days ago, voice calling was nearly impossible to networks including AT&T and T-Mobile in some areas.  BBM was live, working a breeze for everyone I tried contacting.  So keep BBM in consideration as well along with text messaging.

Even if you have your spare batteries ready to go, having a car charger as mentioned above is extremely helpful. In the event of losing power, it becomes ideal to walk out to your car and charge your BlackBerry or other cell phone for the time being.  Got a portable charger? It’s too late to order for this incident, but the ZAGGsparq works wonders on the go, and is compatible with many different phones including BlackBerrys.

If you’re on Twitter, keep up with what’s going on in the hurricane as well by following hashtags (#irene, etc).  Twitter is available for BlackBerry smartphones free in BlackBerry App World.

If you have any tips you’d like to share, post them up in the comments and we’ll add them to the list along with what T-Mobile has put out.  Hope everyone has a safe weekend!

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