janetdeluca2

My son will be studying in Spain for until December. I have a Bberry w/ BBM. We have an old BBerry that will work (if activated) in Spain but BBM won't download on it. Short of buying him a new BBerry, does anyone have an idea of how he can text us for free from there? Thank you.

ijgordon

Kik Messenger is a free texting app that works across platforms (ie, BB/iOS/Android). It'll work over WiFi.

Skype also has texting (as well as voice/video chat of course), though I don't know if it works on BB. There are probably others.

thomas199023

Whatsapp

Ambassador

Get him a ipod touch and download the Text+ app. My son used it over there earlier this summer and it worked great.

gfunkdave

It's odd to me that Messenger won't download on to the Blackberry. Which carrier is it branded to (whose name - AT&T/Cingular/T-mobile/etc - appears on the Blackberry)?

It's pretty easy to download a non-carrier-specific operating system onto the Blackberry that will let you remove the Blackberry Messenger restriction. Check out BlackberryForums.com for further info.

Else, I recommend Whatsapp, which will work across any modern smartphone and send BBM-like messages to anyone in your contacts list.

Another option is for him to sign up for Google Voice, which will allow texting for free - but he'll have to log on to GV on a computer to do it.

janetdeluca2

We have Verizon service. They said you can't get the BBM on this model because it's too old. Yet it will work in Europe.

gfunkdave

Which model is it, exactly?

janetdeluca2

It's 8703e but the operating system is old, 4.1

gfunkdave

The 8703e won't work overseas in the first place. It's CDMA only.

janetdeluca2

It does work in Europe, I've used it myself and verified it again w/ Verizon.

Dubai Stu

I also use Whats App on my iPhone and text with my wife who has a Blackberry with WhatsApp. We've done this all over the globe. If Google Voice works on that old a version of the OS, I would also recommend that.

elCheapoDeluxe

I would second the google voice - I use it exclusively for texting now. It is nice because the texts can be sent/delivered from the BlackBerry or from the google voice web page if one happens to be sitting at a computer and it is more convenient. Unfortunately, I doubt it will work on a version of the OS that old.

edited to add:

Part 1) You should be able to install BBM onto the 4.1 OS from Desktop Manager (you can't download the most recent version and install it separately because of the minimum OS requirements, as you already found out). It doesn't have all the latest features, but it will work fine. It should be a checkbox in the features list.


Part 2) It looks like your BB should support OS 4.5

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...nguage-331276/

Verizon may not have pushed it out to their devices, but you can download another carrier's update from the thread above, delete the vendor.xml file from the update directory after installing it on your PC and it will load to your blackberry.

gfunkdave

Then it's not an 8703e. The 8703e is CDMA only (link).

Regardless, if you're sure it works in Europe you can install BBM via the Desktop Manager as mentioned above.

joshwex90

Something tells me if BBM won't download onto the blackberry, then neither will What's App

gfunkdave

Many carriers used to disable over-the-air download of BBM. But you can still install it via USB.