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Its Saturday September 21, 2013 the day that was everyone that was an early adopter of smartphones back in the day had hoped for. The day that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) would be a cross platform messaging application for Android, iOS and obviously Blackberry. What about windows phone you ask.. What about it???? I respond.. Today is the beginning of that dream as Blackberry announced that today would herald the launch of the Android BBM application and tomorrow would be the launch of the iOS application.

I got the application about 7am this morning via an apk leak and began testing I recovered my blackberry id from my far gone days spent in blackberry land. Logged in setup my profile and then realised I have no one to test it with and I wanted my first test to be truly cross platform. It took me about an hour to find one person with a Blackberry device to invite and start pounding away at the BBM chat GUI. A wave of IM nostalgia hit me when I used my first emoticon. BBM always had the right emoticons man something that whatsapp, hangouts, line, chaton or any other instant messaging application ever got right for me.

I had the action bar enabled as I tend to send a lot of photos throughout the day when chatting via whatsapp and hangouts (my two IM applications of choice). Immediately I noticed there is no way I can keep that feature enabled. There was maybe 2 lines of real-estate for messages with the keyboard and action bar displayed.

Overall I still think I needed more space for the messages when the keyboard was up. I use a Nexus 4 with Paranoid Android which enabled me to use expanded desktop mode for just a little more space it felt right when in expanded desktop mode. Though I’m not a fan of P.I.E Navigation I’ll keep it that way for a bit while i toy around with BBM Some more.

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Thoughts on the roll out

BBM was once the mobile tech giant, industry standard, secure, trendy cutting edge and then they stayed exactly where they were and allowed every other player in the game to innovate their way past Research In Motion (at the time). They made futile attempts to restructure, re-brand, re-position themselves to be a contender but it was always a game of catch up that would never end and now it comes down to this the last stand it comes down to an application, this is all they have left. Sadly the roll out wasn’t even conducted as they announced it would be with launch date being September 21, 2013 for Android as of this moment of this article it is still not available in the Google Play Store but there is a flood of fake BBM apps. Thats my two cents on the matter of the roll out I honestly expected them to get it done right and as promised. I saw a tweet earlier today which made me chuckle. “To Blackberry, is to Disappoint”.

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BlackBerry Statement

Following problems encountered with the Android and iOS release of BBM BlackBerry has released the following statement via their official blog to explain the reasons for the problems and outages.

Prior to launching BBM for Android, an unreleased version of the BBM for Android app was posted online. The interest and enthusiasm we have seen already – more than 1.1 million active users in the first 8 hours without even launching the official Android app – is incredible. Consequently, this unreleased version caused issues, which we have attempted to address throughout the day.

Our teams continue to work around the clock to bring BBM to Android and iPhone, but only when it’s ready and we know it will live up to your expectations of BBM. We are pausing the global roll-out of BBM for Android and iPhone. Customers who have already downloaded BBM for iPhone will be able to continue to use BBM. The unreleased Android app will be disabled, and customers who downloaded it should visit www.BBM.com to register for updates on official BBM for Android availability.

As soon as we are able, we will begin a staggered country roll-out of BBM for Android and continue the roll-out of BBM for iPhone. Please follow @BBM on Twitter for the latest updates and go to www.BBM.com to sign-up for updates about BBM for Android and iPhone. These issues have not impacted BBM service for BlackBerry.

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