Delay in Blackberry Messenger (BBM) for iOS and Android

In this week's blog entry, I was going to write about BBM being available for the iPhone and Android. The date that was stated on Blackberry's blog posting indicated that the Android version of BBM would be available at the Google Play Store on Saturday September 21 whereas the iOS/Apple version of BBM would be available on the Apps Store on Sunday September 22. You can find this mentioned on Blackberry's official blog *HERE*.

Looking at Blackberry's blog entry for today (September 23, 2013), it looks as if it will probably be awhile for BBM to be widely available for Android and iPhone.

Hi Android and iPhone users,
This is Andrew Bocking, head of BBM at BlackBerry. As a follow up to our first blog post on Saturday, I want to take a moment to provide you with an update on the rollout of BBM on Android and iPhone.Last week, an unreleased, older version of the BBM for Android app was posted on numerous file sharing sites. We were aware of an issue with this unreleased version of the BBM for Android app. This older version resulted in volumes of data traffic orders of magnitude higher than normal for each active user and impacted the system in abnormal ways. The version we were planning to release on Saturday addressed these issues, however we could not block users of the unreleased version if we went ahead with the launch.
We attempted to address the problems caused by the unreleased version throughout the day on Saturday, but as active users of the unreleased app neared a million – and accelerated – it became clear that the only way to address the issue was to pause the rollout for both Android and iPhone.
The team is now focused on adjusting the system to completely block this unreleased version of the Android app when we go live with the official BBM for Android app. We are also making sure that the system is reinforced to handle this kind of scenario in the future. While this may sound like a simple task – it’s not. This will take some time and I do not anticipate launching this week.
Thank you for your patience while we take the time needed to deliver the experience you expect from BBM. We will continue to provide you with updates here on InsideBlackBerry.com and through @BBM on Twitter. We will notify everyone who has pre-registered on BBM.com when BBM is available on Android and iPhone.
Andrew Bocking
EVP, BBM

The above was taken from http://blogs.blackberry.com/2013/09/bbm-android-iphone-update/

With all the bad news coming from Blackberry these days, I'm hoping that they actually release BBM for Android and for the iPhone and they don't break their promise similar to what they did when they promised to release BB 10 for the Playbook but then later mentioned that because BB 10 wouldn't run optimally on the Playbook, the decided not to move forward with this project.

For me, even though I have a Blackberry Q10 that has BBM on it, I'm eagerly awaiting (and hoping) that they release BBM for the iPhone and Android platform but based on their past performance, I'm not sure if it will happen anytime soon (if ever).

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Blackberry Protect Review

Since my previous blog entry was regarding Google's new Android Device Manager option, I thought that I would write about Blackberry's equivalent program/option called Blackberry Protect.

There is an application called Blackberry Protect for pre-Blackberry 10 devices while for Blackberry 10 devices, Blackberry Protect is built into the operating system. When the Blackberry that I was using was my Blackberry Bold 9700, I used the Blackberry Protect program which I downloaded from the Blackberry App World.

The version of Blackberry Protect available for pre-Blackberry 10 devices does more than the built-in Blackberry Protect available for Blackberry 10 devices. The pre-Blackberry 10 version allows for backing up and restoring of certain data whereas the Blackberry 10 device only allows for a one type restore of existing pre-Blackberry 10 data onto the Blackberry 10 device. In this blog entry, since Blackberry Protect is part of the Blackberry 10 OS, the version of Blackberry Protect that I'm referring to is the one included with Blackberry Software Release 10.1.0.4181 / Blackberry OS Version 10.1.0.4633.

Blackberry Protect does what I wrote in my blog the last time about Android Device Manager and that is that it allows you to get a rough approximation of the device location and it also allows you to ring the device remotely. In order to do both of these features, the Blackberry 10 device must have data enabled.

The site to access these features of your Blackberry remotely is https://protect.blackberry.com.

Unlike with the current features of Android Device Manager where it can only do three things (give a rough approximation of the location, play sound, and wipe the device remotely), Blackberry Protect for Blackberry 10 devices also allows you to display a message on the Blackberry 10 device and it also allows you to instantly lock the device as well as display a message on the device before locking it instantaneously.

The "My Data" tab on the Blackberry Protect webpage doesn't do anything on Blackberry 10 devices whereas on pre-Blackberry 10 devices it will show you the last few backups which were done on your pre-Blackberry 10 device.

I have included a screen capture of what the "My Data" tab shows for my Blackberry Bold 9700 below.

If you have any comments/questions regarding this blog entry, please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comments section below. Please note that the comments are moderated and any comment containing a URL link (whether embedded or not) will automatically be flagged as spam and will not be posted.