RIM (Research In Motion, LTD.) needs to be proactive and fire the person that "leaked" their product that's still in development. Never have I seen so many BlackBerry fanatics excite themselves by downloading the latest "leak" that hit the OTA (I'm also speaking about myself). But with the issues that I have seen and read about, this app, if it was a leak at all, has more issues than Orangatame's TwitterBerry. The fact that in the applications list the alias for the program is "BBM 5.0" is a bit suspect, but I digress. There are some awesome features that BBM 5.0 has that will put them ahead of the game, but a very sincere warning for you: STAY AWAY FROM BLACKBERRY MESSENGER 5.0 (BETA)!
When I first ran across BlackBerry Messenger (4.5) for the first time, I fell in love with it's professional features. Very simple and easy to use, I wanted everyone, that I knew that possessed a BlackBerry, to give me their PIN so I can stay in contact with them via Messenger. Yes, the version probably needed some upgrading, but I would've been content with keeping it the same, with it's simple layout. (Compare with the pic above.) The new version, 5.0 has a totally different look to it; perhaps to appeal more to people who own the BlackBerry Storm or even the newly released Tour that are both only available to Verizon customers. Not a very bad look, but maybe I'm just old fashioned.
While the features on the proposed release are astonishing, there are a lot of issues and risks that you may go through messing with this leaked beta release.
The Positives
- You can add contacts by scanning your friend's Barcode with your device.
- You're able to Broadcast a message to multiple contacts.
- Avatars are now enabled
- Backing up your contact list is now made possible by saving them on to your media card. So, if you switch devices or have to wipe it clean, you wouldn't have to worry about re-adding all of your messenger contacts
- Friends can have access to your GPS location
- Stored on your Media Card, chat history can be accessed.
- Although it gives you the option to enable it, when Pinged, the device doesn't vibrate
- The smileys do not look at all 3 Dimensional as it did in the previous release. Pretty cheesy.
- Messages are not delivered at times or there is a long delay. Usually this is solved by restarting your device by battery pull or LShift+RShift+Del. This gets rather annoying.
- Careful, it was brought to my attention that some of your messages will be sent to someone else rather than your intended recipient
- It has the tendency of showing some friends as "unreachable" but they really aren't
(More will be added later)
When RIM finishes with his software, it will have the potential of beating the leading mobile versions of Yahoo and Google Talk into being a top notch mobile messenger. But who knows when they'll be done developing, testing and fixing bugs. If you're stuck with this app like me, the only way to restore the previous version is to reinstall your OS on your device. For those that are thinking about installing the app, don't risk it. The bugs are way too tremendous and you'll be crying with agonizing pain. Maybe I was a bit too harsh in calling for the termination of the RIM employed App Leaker, however, fix the bugs!
There are all sorts of snapshots of this app on the web. Check out BlackBerryRocks for examples.
Ciao...
P.S. What do you think about this app? Love it? Hate it? I would love to hear from you.
