For a couple of weeks now, I have been running a leaked version of BlackBerry Messenger version 5 on my Bold (4.6.0.297), I loved where RIM was going but the leaked version was clearly beta as there was a lot of stuff that would just break; most frustratingly, it would sometimes stop sending messages to a certain random contact. It was so bad that I reluctantly had to uninstall it and start to use the old one, but having seen what lay in store for me, I pined for the released version.
I was as happy as could be when I discovered that RIM had released messenger 5 on AppWorld, so I quickly downloaded and installed it. This time round, rock solid.
Some nifty features of the new version, other than a much better looking interface include:
- Remote Backup: Stores your Contact List, Group Membership and Profile on a Blackberry Messenger server. Allows you to get back to where you were prior to dropping your BlackBerry into the swimming pool
- Local subjects for chats
- You can set a password that your contacts need to know in order to accept your invite (presumably this is to prevent your girlfriend’s husband from accepting your BIM inviteand chatting to you on it).
- A Facebook like, recent updates list, that lists all your contacts display picture changes etc (Avatars, similar to those in Windows Live and Google Talk for the Blackberry)
- You can now send files, and large ones, I have send a 2MB file already, but I don’t know that the limit is
- Nice BlackBerry contact list integration
- My personal geeky favourite: you can get friends with a barcode. If you go to the “My Profile” section, you can display a barcode (below) which someone else, running BlackBerry Messenger 5 can “scan” with their camera, thusly becoming your BlackBerry friend
BlackBerry “My Profile” Barcode
All in all, if you use BIM a lot, you need this upgrade, so head over to AppWord and get started.
