BBM Fails to Launch in Zambia

The exciting adverts and the relief of no longer needing to carry that heavy BlackBerry device where you enjoy your BlackBerry Messenger, popularly BBM has not yielded what most owners of a Samsung Galaxy device hoped for.

 

For starters, the system requirements for BBM to run are as follows:

– Android OS 4.0 and up

– 13 Mb to install

– and a generally up to scratch processor for speed and good graphics rendering (so we figured the last Galaxy S3 is a minimum)

 

Any attempt to install on earlier devices yields the following result from below screenshot.

 

The biggest disappointment is that outside South Africa, BBM is not available as experienced by the @sandichichi from the screenshot she shared in the morning today.

Our hope is that Samsung can realise that they can not selectively please and serve their customers who mostly pay for unsubsidised handsets and invest a lot of time staying up to date with their new products only to be told a service/product is not available in their ‘country.’ We welcome comments from the #Samsung Zambia Team.

However, a quick look on the web shows there are quicker ways of getting it. The company’s wait list can actually be bypassed after downloading the app on either your Android or iOS device. Open the app, enter your e-mail address, click Next, and then force-close it.

This can be done on iOS by double-clicking the home button and swiping the app away. On Android, enter the multitasking menu and swipe the app away, or go to Settings, Apps, BBM, and click Force Close. After relaunching the app you should have the power to create an account, which will assign you a unique PIN, and to begin inviting friends.

This hack was tried by CNET writers and it worked. However, BlackBerry could fix the workaround at any time.