An accelerated roller apparatus on a handheld electronic communications device that handles urgency conditions. The device includes a manipulable mechanism that is capable of generating a manipulation-related signal. Changes in the signal occur whenever motion is imparted upon the manipulable mechanism. An urgency activity detector module generates an urgency message when the changes in the signal indicate an urgency condition. The urgency activity detector module uses the signal changes to determine the urgency condition based upon timing of successive manipulations of the manipulable mechanism satisfying a preselected timing threshold. The urgency message is then used by an application operating on the device.