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BBM Is Coming To Android and the iPhone This Weekend
The summer officially ends this weekend and as promised BlackBerry will deliver BBM by then. While they cut it really close to missing their promise to have BBM for iPhone and Android out by the end of the summer, BlackBerry today announced that BBM for Android will be out this Saturday, September 21st, at 7 AM Eastern Time. BBM for iPhone will be available a several hours later at 12:01 AM local time (meaning when its 12:01 AM where you are) on Sunday the 22nd. BBM for Android will be available to download from the Google Play Store while BBM for iPhone will be available at that time in the App Store.
BBM for iPhone and Android brings many of the BBM features you know and love including single person and group chats, the ability to share photos and voice notes, a unique BBM PIN etc. The Android version even allows you to add a BBM contact using NFC just by just taping your phone with your friend’s (assuming you both have Android/BlackBerry 10 phones with NFC). You yet be able to do video chats, screen share or BBM voice calls, but BlackBerry has said that those features would be coming as updates in a “future version.”
BBM for iPhone will work on iPhones running iOS 6 or iOS 7 (so the 3GS, 4, 4S, 5 and new 5C and 5S), while BBM for Android will work on phones running Android 4.0 or later (Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean).
So are you excited for this or have you moved on already to iMessage/WhatsApp/something else?
More info: BlackBerry
Here’s What BBM For Android Will Look Like
Earlier this year BlackBerry announced that they would be bringing BBM to iOS and Android this summer. With the summer quickly coming to a close it’s been a while since we heard anything about it. Well, BlackBerryOS.com got their hands on a copy of the upcoming app for Android and have posted a quick video tour of the app online.
From the video posted, BBM for Android looks and runs exactly like it does on BlackBerry 10. It’s got the same design as the BlackBerry 10 version of BBM and you can do pretty much all the things you’d expect to do with BBM– single person and group chats, the ability to share photos and voice notes etc. The Android version even allows you to add a BBM contact using NFC just by just taping your phone with your friend’s (assuming you both have Android/BlackBerry 10 phones with NFC). You can’t yet do video chats, screen share or BBM voice calls, but BlackBerry has said that those features would be coming as updates later this year.
As for when we can expect BBM to come out for iPhone and Android, well, that is still anyone’s guess. Technically summer isn’t over until September 21st, so BlackBerry still has a few weeks to fulfill its promise of getting this out before it ends. Then again, as you can see from the tweet below, Samsung has teased that BBM for Galaxy phones is coming “very soon” so maybe we’ll see it well before then.
The full video of BBM for Android in action is after the break.
You’ll want to broadcast this message! BBM is coming soon to your Samsung GALAXY Smartphone very soon! pic.twitter.com/6ibSeZ88oo
— Samsung Mobile SA (@SamsungMobileSA) September 2, 2013
More info: BlackBerryOS.com, The Verge
BBM Is Finally Coming to the iPhone and Android This Summer– Do You Still Care?
Well, after being rumored for years BlackBerry today finally made it official. This summer BBM will be coming to Android and the iPhone. The apps will be available for free and run on iOS devices running iOS 6 or later and Android devices running Android 4.0 (aka “Ice Cream Sandwich”) or later. Both apps will offer the full BBM experience including BBM chats, multi-person chats, the ability to share photos and voice notes, and participate in BBM Groups with up to 30 people. Features like BBM Video Chat, screen share and voice chat are promised as updates for later this year.
Now while two years ago when BlackBerrys were still popular this would have been huge news, today we gotta ask if BBM coming to non-BlackBerrys still actually matters to you. Between iMessage, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Kik, Facebook Messenger and the dozens of other free messaging apps out there today, the appeal of BBM just isn’t as strong as it once was. Think about it, how many of your friends still even use BBM? I know most of mine don’t, or if they do they also use some other app like WhatsApp as well.
We’ll have more on BBM once it launches this summer, but in the meantime let us know your thoughts on the news– and if you even care about BBM anymore– in the comments.
More info: BlackBerry, pic from The Verge
Is This BBM On Android?
We all know that Apple is bringing their own version of BBM to the iPhone next week with iOS 5 and iMessage, but from the looks of this, RIM (the makers of BlackBerry) is about to make a big move of their own: bringing an official BBM app to Android. That’s right: real, official BBM— on Android.
If you remember, we heard a rumor about this earlier this year (along with rumors of an official BBM app for iPhone) but these are the first pics we’ve seen of what BBM would look like on something other than a BlackBerry. And while these pics may very well be fake and Photoshopped (there have been a lot of fakes floating around online over the last couple of days), they look pretty real to us and make sense with everything else we’ve previously heard about RIM working on bringing BBM to Android (and the fact that it’s on a phone that actually looks like a RIM Android test phone– with its sticker Android buttons and BB_Dev folder on the homescreen– makes us further believe that this really could be legit).
Obviously details like exact features (rumors are this may be a “BBM-lite” with the full BBM experience being available only on real BlackBerrys) or when we can expect the app to be officially announced are still not known, though TechnoBuffalo— the site that leaked the pics– says it could be announced as soon as October 18th-20th at BlackBerry’s DevCon conference.
We’ll of course let you know more as we hear it, but assuming this is true– and BBM officially comes to Android– would you ditch your BlackBerry and go with a new ‘Droid instead (or better yet– would this make you want to get an Android over the iPhone for your next phone?)? Let us know in the comments.
More info: TechnoBuffalo
MAJOR RUMOR: BBM Coming to Android and iPhone This Year?
Could this be true? BBM on an iPhone?
File this one under the most awesome and incredible rumor we’ve ever heard. According to BGR, who is pretty much dead-on when it comes to BlackBerry news (they were the ones who first leaked the Storm three years ago and more recently BlackBerry’s upcoming 2011 lineup), both Android and the iPhone (and it’s iOS) may soon get one of the greatest BlackBerry features on their devices– official BlackBerry Messenger. Yes, BBM is said to be on its way for Android and iPhone.
BGR’s sources didn’t reveal an exact date for when all this would go down, though according to the leak it did appear that at least the Android version would be at least announced this year (our guess would be at BlackBerry’s big BlackBerry World conference in May, but again that’s just our guess) with iPhone/iOS support after that. The BGR leak also goes on to mention how this would be more of a “BBM-lite” and while you would be able to BBM with anyone on a BlackBerry, the Android and iPhone versions might be lacking certain features like sending pics, and videos. For that full BBM experience you’d need to get an actual BlackBerry.
A lot of you are probably thinking right about now “the only reason I’d get a BlackBerry is for BBM, why would I go with it now if I can just get it on iPhone and Android?” Well, as we said above and as BGR alludes to in his post, this would be a great way for BlackBerry to begin to pull people back away from the ever-growing iPhone and Android platforms by teasing them with the BBM and BlackBerry experience, with the only way to get that full experience being switching to a BlackBerry (and if there’s an additional fee to use BBM on iPhone/Android then people who love the service may be even more eager to switch over and get full BBM and save money).
Seeing as one of the most frequent questions we get here at TeensTalkTech is about BBM and BlackBerry here’s the million dollar question– how important is BBM to you and are you willing to still go with that “BBM-lite” (again, text only no pic or video sharing) on an iPhone/Android phone or would you still go with the traditional BlackBerry and BBM when you go for your next new phone? Sound off in the comments.
Pic– which is fake and Photoshopped— from OmniTechNews.net
