I'm sorry, but blackberry messenger sucks. I have had my blackberry bold 9700 for about 7 or so months, and BBM was one of the first applications I installed on my device. To be honest, I was really hesitant about installing it on my phone.

Having been with Windows based phones for so long, I realized I couldn't stand the device and I needed to make a switch to a more efficient smartphone, this was because I was at the point of dropping the whole smartphone concept and going back to a basic phone (I really loved my Nokia 3390 and Moto v600). It was hard though, as I have been with smartphones since 2005 and I loved getting email on it. Sure this day and age, all phones have all that crap; email, social, camera, etc.

So I did look into other phones, like the Android and the iPhone. Problem? they are all mainly touchscreen phones, and I hate touchscreens with a passion. In most cases, touchscreens add nothing more but fragile screens, fingerprints, more battery drain, and a larger price tag. My only real choice was going with the blackberry, since I only cared about text communication.

The funny thing is if you ask any blackberry user what is so 'great' about blackberry, they may say email first, but second they will usually mention BBM. My buddy would constantly tell me how great BBM was, as if it was the second coming of christ or something. I remember I would ask him "what's so great about it?" This was the basic response;

"You can BBM other blackberry users!" um, wow? there's a feature that allows you to message anyone with a cell phone... it's called SMS

"Yeah, but you can also send pictures!" and you can't with MMS or email?

Pretty much shut him up after that. There is only one feature on BBM that texting doesn't have, which is knowing if your message has been delivered and read, which is a double edge sword. It's nice to know someone read your message, but people freak if they see you read their message and take your time responding.

So what is BBM? It's nothing more than a messaging program that blackberry users can act smug about as if they are apart of a special group that not everyone can join in on. It is actually funny reading comments on an article about bringing BBM to the desktop. The backlash is pathetic, like these people think they are elitist of some sort.

Another problem is the fact that BBM takes up 4.3 megs of my memory and it's ALWAYS running. Maybe not a big deal to a few people, but running 6.0 on a 9700 seriously limits your RAM.

Regardless, The rate that RIM is going, I doubt I will get another blackberry, swallow my pride, and move to android. Then again... there's always a peek :)