The long awaited BlackBerry Messenger for Windows Phone has found its way to the store. Following BlackBerry’s announcement about the app’s availability for Windows Phone users this July; it’s finally here. Unfortunately, BBM for Windows Phone is only available for beta testers and no word is out on how to become one., at least not yet!
The app is being published under the same publisher name as other supported mobile operating systems – BlackBerry Limited. Here’s a quick reminder of what you should expect:
BBM going forward will strive to maintain a healthy balance between BBM maintaining its own identity while still honoring the best practices of platform’s guidelines. In other words, BBM users moving between platforms should recognize and know how to use BBM in an instance, while at the same time the app should still look and feel like the best native apps on the platform. For Windows Phone, expect BBM to feature its own live tile and panoramas.
I want to believe that BBM will allow for audio file sharing as well as VOIP calls. No? It’s a welcome app for almost everyone. My premise was based on the app requirements in the Windows Phone Store as seen below:
contacts, phone identity, owner identity,video and still capture, location services, maps, music library, photos library, media playback, microphone, data services, push notification service, movement and directional sensor, VOIP calling, web browser component, HD720P (720×1280), WVGA (480×800), WXGA (768×1280). The app will run on any Windows Phone 8 or Windows Phone 8.1 device.
Top instant messaging competitor, WhatsApp does not have access to the music library on Windows Phones thereby making it impossible to share music files from the library. By what is written above, BBM for Windows Phone should support music file sharing which will be a big one for the OS family, launching an attack towards WhatsApp on the platform.
Can’t wait to download BBM for Windows Phone? You just need to wait a little longer 😉 (maybe few more hours, days or weeks). Again, note that you can only view the app (link below) and not install it. If you are a developer, you can download manually; deploying however will give some errors. Just wait for the app to be launched 😀
Stay strapped to this blog for updates about BBM for Windows Phone. If words on how to join the private beta testers springs out, we’ll let you know.
See BBM for Windows Phone here. [11MB]
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