If I could point out the one big reason that BBM was very popular at one point was because of the little "D" and "R" on outgoing messages. "D" meant delivered and "R" meant read. That, along with the reliability and performance of the messaging service and the fact that you didn't have to have to pay for a messaging plan to send messages/images/video, made it really great. I know Google Hangouts now has the "read" feature, and I believe iMessage does as well, but WhatsApp does not.

Beyond that, it just had a very intuitive UI and just worked as you expected it to. They steadily added new features like groups, voice and video calling which increased its value over time, but unfortunately, the user base got crushed.

I'm looking forward to trying it out on my N4 ... my wife uses a blackberry Z10, so I have at least one person to use it with.

In WhastApp, there are two little checkboxes next to every message -- one indicates the message has been received by the server (which is actually very useful!), two indicates the message has been delivered to the client. Coupled with the "Last seen at <this-time>" indicator for each chat partner, it's a decent heuristic for read messages.

When I was in a long-distance relationship a couple of years ago and couldn't SMS internationally without re-mortgaging, we made heavy use of an Android app called Kik which also had this very useful feature. It had four indicators, if I remember correctly. "..." meant it was pending and you were having network/signal issues, "S" meant the Kik server had received it from your network, and the "D" and "R" were delivered and read.

I didn't know Google Hangouts had it. How does it display the read indicator? I find the interface a little... obtuse, to say the least!

As far as I know, on whatsapp, one checkmark on a message means delivered, two means read. It depends on the device of the recipient though. Works best with iOS and Android devices in my experience.

That's not correct actually. The second checkmark means its been delivered to the device, not necessarily read.

It's pretty much the only service anyone who owned (owns?) a Blackberry ever raved about. Yes, they had easy-to-use email before anyone else did. But BBM really was a great chat service, and it was way ahead of its time.

I'm not sure how it stands up against the competition now, as I haven't owned a Blackberry in many years. But it was a really solid service back in the day, and I think a lot of people out there still love it.

I doubt this saves Blackberry/RIM/the_artist_formerly_known_as_RIM from extinction, but it's an interesting move.

I think it's mostly that it was one of the first free, popular messaging services, at a time when text messages in the US were a lot more expensive. I have never used it myself, so I can't say for sure. It does seem fairly irrelevant in the modern day and age.

When you have a family plan with multiple lines, even the first level block text messaging plans add up quickly. (I'm on Verizon in the USA).

I feel the whole text message surcharge system is just a racket, so any way I can beat that is fine by me.

Why is it irrelevant? Messaging apps like WhatsApp, KaoKaoTalk, and Viber are hugely popular.

Maybe I spoke incautiously. I should have said, "Less relevant." And although I understand these other apps have big user-bases, none of them have anything like the penetration of unlimited SMS, if I had to guess.

Bundled SMS are usually only "free" within the home country. International SMS get expensive fast, even with the new European rules on pricing. WhatsApp and presumably BBM, etc are great for people with contacts abroad / Travellers with a local data plan (although WhatsApp gets complicated with all the different numbers, so travellers will likely benefit the most).