Few hours ago, I was lucky to find BBM for iPhone in Apple AppStore and quickly downloaded it (free). When I told my friends about it, they tried to download the app and couldn’t find it. Then I checked my previous link and it says “Item Not Available”. The app was actually published by Blackberry, then quickly pulled off.
After some reading, I found this article : http://blogs.blackberry.com/2013/09/bbm-for-android-iphone-launch-update/
So the app I downloaded is actually an official app, but I’m one of the few people who managed to get it before the pull-off. When I first tried the app, it only shows “Server Under Maintenance” page. But few hours later when the app already disappeared from AppStore and I tried to re-opened it, it worked normally.
To use BBM for iPhone, we need to have a Blackberry ID. We can login with our existing ID, or we can create a new one. Once we are logged-in for the first time, the app will show our BBM PIN. We can add contacts by PIN, by barcode, by email or by SMS.
My initial test using this app was to add few of my friends. So far I have successfully tested this app to chat with a friend using BBM for Android, and another friend using an actual Blackberry phone. All works fine.
It’s worth to mention that when adding my friend’s PIN from Android, there’s about 2 minutes delay in the adding process before we finally can see each other in contact list. Not sure whether this is a bug from the app, or Blackberry servers are simply not reliable enough to handle their new users from iOS and Android.
The app interface itself look very standard. Almost old-fashion, I would say. It looks like an interface from the last decade. Well, I guess it’s a natural outcome coming from a company with a technology level of “last decade”.
Overall, it’s just another chat service. Just like Apple’s iMessage, Yahoo Messenger, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, Line, Skype, Samsung’s ChatON and so many more. Nothing special about this one. Not even better. But I guess I’ll keep this installed just for the sake to communicate with certain group of people-in-denial who still think BBM is the only (or the best) chat service.
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