News

No queues for Samsung device owners in Africa, just download BBM on Samsung Apps

October 21, 2013

So Blackberry is finally rolling out Blackberry Messenger to the masses at the moment. However, as I had noted earlier, if you were not among the 6 million thirsty for BBM earlier who bothered to pre-register, you are out of luck. At the moment, that is. See there’s a line, you need to wait a little bit. Blackberry says this is due to incredible demand. Understandable since they screwed things the first time they attempted a mass roll out and BBM is quite popular the world over.

However, you’re a lucky soul if you reside in Sub-Saharan Africa and own a Samsung device. Remember those ‘BBM is coming to Samsung Galaxy devices’ ads that were running concurrently on DSTv Africa during weekend football matches and on the web by your browser’s side bar? They meant something. If you have a Samsung Galaxy device then you are excused from the long queues. Just go to your app drawer, fire up the Samsung Apps app and search for BBM. You should see something like this:

Install the app. Just 12.9 MB. Go through the sign up/registration process and you’ll be fine. I had pre-registered but you don’t need to. Owning a Samsung device and having access to the Samsung Apps store is all you need. Oh, and your device needs to be running at least Android 4.0.3. Seeing as it is that even the Galaxy Pocket received an ICS (Android 4.0.4) update from Samsung a few months ago, this means almost all Galaxy devices are getting some BBM love.

Note:

You need to install BBM for Android from the Samsung Apps store. If you sideload it, you’ll be treated like any other Android device owner and be made to wait on that virtual queue.
Many friends who have Samsung Galaxy devices and have gone through the Samsung Apps installation process are still complaining that they are being made to wait. Just try it out, I’m not so sure how effective this is. I had pre-registered so in any way I could not have noticed this personally.
It will take sometime before the app is available through the Google Play Store so if you’re being made to queue, the sooner you queue the better. You never know, your PIN could be active in a few hours time. Many users in Kenya (at least those that have reached to me) are reporting seeing the BBM app on the Play via web but aren’t able to install it. That means the app is locked for our region, at least for now. Samsung Apps is your best bet now.