Blackberry Messenger (BBM) for iOS and Android is Finally Here

The Blackberry Messenger (BBM) is finally out for iPhone and Android. After the delayed release due to the leaked Android version, it’s quite good to know that the elusive messenger is now here. I have personally installed it on my iPhone and I can report that the messenger works as expected.

It seems I was able to use it straight away because I was on their launch notification list, some of my friends actually have to still wait until they receive the invitation email. I guess they are trying to minimise the activation rate or something like that.

Market wise, only time will tell if this will help Blackberry’s stock price that has plummeted more than 90% from their last highest peak. I say this because even though the smartphone isn’t as widely popular anymore, there are still a lot of customers in South East Asia relying on the Blackberry Messenger for personal and business communications.

Moving to the New BBM

Anyway, here are some tips to make live easier transitioning from the legacy BBM client to this new one.

• Sign in with your existing Blackberry ID so that your contacts got transferred. This did not happen for me because my original BBM messenger was the one that came with the device, it wasn’t linked to my Blackberry ID properly.
• If you are in a BBM group, ask one of your contacts to invite you back in. From there you can easily add everyone in the group as your contacts.
• Choose import contact when asked the first time (I didn’t do this and I have no idea how to start the import now).

The Experience so Far

As of this writing I am able to re-invite my old blackberry contacts and have been chatting with them for a bit now. So I can say that the messenger does work properly as promised. The messages arrived in timely manner and I’m happy to say that the “D” for delivered message status translates well from the old Blackberry Messenger client into this new messenger client.

I will update this post with my experience throughout the day regarding full day connectivity and battery usages on an iPhone 5s. Stay tuned :)

Update #1

It’s very hard to search the BBM apps in iTunes, so here’s a direct link to the app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bbm/id690046600?mt=8  

Also the link to Google Play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bbm&hl=en

Update #2

It seems that the messenger is using a lot of power. I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I have a lot of incoming messages from my groups or if the app is yet to be optimised. My phone battery is down from 100% to 39% in about 6 hours so far. Hopefully there will be new update to reduce the power consumption somehow.

Messaging wise it’s going great though, messages are received timely including sending pictures with contacts across different countries.

Update #3

It seems with the latest update, adding participants to group is now much easier… it used to ask me to enter the BB PIN manually. Unfortunately as of the time of this update the application still does not support landscape display.

Categorised in: Business Process, Fun computing, General Computing