BBM For Android APK Download Leaks; Comes With A Catch

BBM For Android APK Download Leaks; Comes With A
Catch
By Paul Morris | September 16th, 2013

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) is coming to Android and
iOS really soon. The faltering company announced back in
May of this year that they were in the process of porting
their once popular messaging platform to multiple
platforms, but it looks like the Android version has
managed to make an appearance a little prematurely.
That’s right folks, BlackBerry Messenger for Android has
somehow managed to leak out to the public, but
executives don’t need to worry just yet, as it’s entirely
unusable without prior permission being granted.
Rumor has it that the official (re)launch of the now cross-
platform messaging system will be coming in the next few
days. BlackBerry themselves have done little to dampen
the speculation after sending out a bunch of invitations to
a dedicated event to be held this Wednesday. It’s likely
that the event will be used to discuss BBM in a lot more
detail, including the ability that it will provide to users for
messaging across platforms like Android, iOS and
BlackBerry’s own BB10 operating system.
The leak of the Android variant of BBM couldn’t really
have come at a better time for BlackBerry. The launch
event for the software is so close that it wouldn’t provide
any great issues for the company even if the leak was fully
functional. However, it also gets the technology loving
community talking about the messaging platform which
will ultimately drum up interest for when the app is live. As
it stands at the minute, the leaked version that we are
seeing requires prior user ID authentication to actually
work, so it’s nothing more than an aesthetically pleasing
shell at this point.
Users who intend to get involved with the new BBM will
first of all have to have their BlackBerry IDs authenticated
with BlackBerry’s servers before the product will work.
Unless you are an official beta tester of this port, then it’s
unlikely that your ID will be able to sign into the leaked
app. There’s always the option for you to beg and plead
with BlackBerry to get your user ID whitelisted on their
servers, but we wouldn’t hold our breath on that one.
It’ll be extremely interesting to see what the future holds
for BBM and if the decision to go cross-platform has the
desired results. If the September 18th launch date proves
to be accurate then we don’t have long to wait.
(Source: CrackBerry)