[App Review]: LiveProfile Beta

As many of you have probably heard, the long awaited arrival of LiveProfile is here!  For those who are not sure what LiveProfile is, it is the cross-plateform BBM that will let BlackBerry users chat with their friends and family who have Android or iPhone devices within an environment that is very similar to BBM.  From message status to PIN numbers, BlackBerry users are sure to feel right at home when using this app.  It even integrates into the Messages icon so that all of your messages will be easily accessible.  So, without further wait, lets move forward!

The first screen you will see when you launce LiveProfile, is typically the main chat screen.  From here you can view new friend requests, active chats, and current friends.  The layout is very similar to BBM, but I notice it seems to be missing friend groups.  Though I don’t like that everyone falls under the Friends category, it is still better than nothing.

Once you’ve clicked a friend to message, or opened up an active chat, you’ll be presented with your chat history and an all to familiar chat bar.  This bar acts just like your BBM bar, and even has the smiley face quick access button on the right.  One thing I have found in my version of LiveProfile, though I must admit I’m a bug fix build behind, is that if I press “R” like the box suggests, my cursor does not jump to the chat bar.  Though this is a little annoying and misleading, it is good to know that we can expect to see this ability very soon.

The next screen we will take a look at is pretty important if you ever want to make use of LiveProfile.  Adding a friend is very simple, and I’d say almost simpler than BBM.  You can manually add a friend by their LiveProfile PIN, phone number, or E-Mail.  You also have the option of adding and inviting friends from your address book, FaceBook, and Twitter, to name a few from the image.  I am finding that, until LiveProfile becomes more popular among the other devices, that it is easier for me to E-Mail or text my friends manually and let them know that I’m using LiveProfile.  Most of them don’t have it on their phones, but they have assured me that it will be a new app for them very soon…I hope?

Profiles, at the moment, are a little bland.  You can see a friends profile pic (though BlackBerry users should note that you can’t yet add a picture, and that this is an iPhone friend of mine), you can see their PIN, and you can see how many friends they have.  There is also their screen name, status, and location.  All-in-all, a little lacking here but with hopes of improvements.

Editing your profile is just that!  The ability to change your display name, real name, set your birthday, and a few other settings down the screen.  I haven’t bothered setting a profile pic as the last time I tried it not only failed, but I had to do a full battery pull on my device.  This is again another area that I hope to see some great things out of in the future.

Status updates are another BBM feature that I am glad to see here, along with your Availability.  As you can see from the list, there is the option of posting to your facebook and twitter accounts, but I have yet to make this happen.  If any users have been able to do this, I’d be very interested in knowing what you had to do to set this up.  If it is just there as an expectation of what is to come, I must say I am pretty excited…now just give me the option to update my BBM status at the same time, and we’ll be game!

I realize this is a smaller review than my others, but the app is newly released.  I am pretty impressed with what we are seeing so far from this application, and with the little thrown in treats of what we can expect to see, and I plan on keeping the app on my phone to see what else the developers come up with.  I’ve already started to compile a list of features/additions/modifications I’d like to see in the application, and I’ll be sending that over some time next week.  I really expect great things from this application, especially after seeing how smoothly it runs on iPhone.  Let me know what your thoughts are on this app, or what you might use in its place (WhatsApp, perhaps?)!

Check Out The LiveProfile Web Site >>

Get LiveProfile For BlackBerry >>