Question

Is there a way to know if users press one of the two hardware volume buttons on the side of the phone?

Answer 1

On your MainScreen or FullScreen class, override the following method:

protected boolean keyControl(char key, int status, int time) {
    switch (key) {
        case Characters.CONTROL_VOLUME_UP:
            // Do something
            return true;
        case Characters.CONTROL_VOLUME_DOWN:
            // Do something
            return true;
        default:
            return super.keyCharUnhandled(key, status, time);
    }
}

The caveat being that this only works when your app and that screen are in the foreground. If you want to allow users to use the volume keys while your app is in the background, you’ll need to use the BlackBerry Media Actions API, which is only available on 5.0 and above.