Blackberry and WhatsApp without BIS

S

StNick

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Hey guys,

I would love some advice from the Blackberry gurus here please. I myself am an Android user, and I have very little knowledge about how Blackberry works.

My folks are pensioners, and my dad recently bought my mom a Blackberry Curve on a basic Vodacom contract through Autopage without BIS. I thought this was great, since it meant that we could get her onto WhatsApp. For a long time now, my mom has only owned a cheapie Nokie, and my sister and I have wanted to create a family WhatsApp group to share photos of our kids etc with our folks.

Long-story short, it turns out that you cannot even get to Blackberry Appworld to install WhatsApp without BIS, even though she is on Wifi at home almost exclusively. I went into an Autopage yesterday to make some enquiries, and apparently the only BIS package Vodacom offers is the full one, which is R59 per month. This is quite a lot extra to pay on a basic contract, I'm having a hard-time convincing my folks to do it.

So I'm about to just pay for the BIS myself, but before I do that, I wanted to ask whether there is ANY way to get WhatsApp onto her phone without Appworld? eg. on Android, I'd just install the .APK manually. Does BB have a similar thing?

Thanks for any advice!
 
hmm, not sure if i can help here but will give you my experience.
I once ran out of BIS prepaid with MTN. I could still use whatsapp as i had airtime (obv airtime wasn't even to subscribe to another month's BIS from MTN).

I'm my opinion whatsapp should work on any smartphone as it will just consume data.

I think it's best if you check with Vodacom/Autopage for the correct advice rather
 
First question. How is she going to access the internet? Have you set the apn on the Blackberry?
I find that a Blackberry without Blackberry services are usually more than useless.

On the device go to http://www.whatsapp.com/ota/ . It will detect the phone and provide a download link
 
Thanks for the replies!

Most of the time, she is at home, and I've set up wifi there for them already. So I assumed that if she was on Wifi, she could browse etc (but I haven't actually tried yet). Its not the end of the world if our WhatsApps only get to her when she's at home.

I will definitely give the OTA thing a shot, thank you. Do you know what the APNs should be for Vodacom? I could always give that a shot too.
 
StNick said:
Do you know what the APNs should be for Vodacom? I could always give that a shot too.
Click to expand...

If you are on BIS, you can use APN: blackberry.net . Might work if you are also not on BIS, i dunno never tried
The normal Vodacom APN is: internet
 
You can run WhatsApp and the internet browser using the Wifi. You can download WhatsApp directly from the WhatsApp website.
 
StNick said:
Hey guys,

I would love some advice from the Blackberry gurus here please. I myself am an Android user, and I have very little knowledge about how Blackberry works.

My folks are pensioners, and my dad recently bought my mom a Blackberry Curve on a basic Vodacom contract through Autopage without BIS. I thought this was great, since it meant that we could get her onto WhatsApp. For a long time now, my mom has only owned a cheapie Nokie, and my sister and I have wanted to create a family WhatsApp group to share photos of our kids etc with our folks.

Long-story short, it turns out that you cannot even get to Blackberry Appworld to install WhatsApp without BIS, even though she is on Wifi at home almost exclusively. I went into an Autopage yesterday to make some enquiries, and apparently the only BIS package Vodacom offers is the full one, which is R59 per month. This is quite a lot extra to pay on a basic contract, I'm having a hard-time convincing my folks to do it.

So I'm about to just pay for the BIS myself, but before I do that, I wanted to ask whether there is ANY way to get WhatsApp onto her phone without Appworld? eg. on Android, I'd just install the .APK manually. Does BB have a similar thing?

Thanks for any advice!
Click to expand...

I've never owned a BB but remember something about ensuring that in the settings the default data usage is set to wifi. For some reason, even thought you may be connected to the wifi, if that setting is not changed in options, it seems to want to use BIS. I'm quite sure that you don't need BIS to acces the Appworld and download and use Whatapp.
 
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