For a long time, BlackBerry Messenger has been rumored to come to Android and iOS, and finally last month the company confirmed that the service would be coming to other platforms. There was still mystery surrounding it, however, as no official release date was known. Many people have said that BlackBerry Messenger is the only thing worth using on the operating system nowadays, so it looks like many people will soon be migrating to other platforms now that it is launching soon.
Even though the company itself has yet to announce anything, T-Mobile UK has spilled the beans regarding the Android and iOS versions of BlackBerry Messenger on Twitter. The carrier says that the service will launch on the competing platforms June 27th. Just to note, this is the official, verified account for the carrier, so we have no reason to believe that this is not true. Alongside the message was an image of what appears to be BlackBerry Messenger running on a Galaxy S3, though unfortunately, the picture was run through some sort of Instagram filter, so it is hard to get the general feel of the apps’s design.
https://twitter.com/TMobileUK/status/342653388300890114
Previous reports indicate that the app will require Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to be used, but according to recent Android distribution numbers, that’s a pretty good chunk of you. While the Android and iOS versions of BBM will not be as full featured as the native BlackBerry client, the app will allow for cross-platform chatting, as well as the sharing of Groups and voice notes. Voice and video calling are expected to be available at a later date.
It is a tad odd that the official announcement for the new BlackBerry Messenger apps came from T-Mobile and not the Canadian company itself. Hopefully, however, we’ll hear something from BlackBerry soon. We’re assuming that the BlackBerry Messenger client will be free to download from the Play Store, but it’s possible that it may cost a few bucks.
While the BlackBerry user base has gotten a lot smaller recently, there is still a healthy number of people using it. Are you interested in using BBM for Android to chat with your BlackBerry brethren? Let us know down in the comments!
UPDATE: It turns out T-Mobile UK’s claims were unfounded. Blackberry released the following statement on the matter:
“We haven’t announced a date other than BBM for iOS and Android is coming this summer.”
In other words, T-Mobile made a boo-boo. In addition, the tweet embed above has since been deleted from Twitter. Sorry about that folks, we’ll keep you updated on the matter as soon as we know more!