OK, seriously?! This is too funny and just too awesome. So if you're a hardcore CrackBerry reader and BlackBerry enthusiast you've obviously heard about the BlackBerry Beta Zone, where you can apply to test out some of RIM's upcoming apps and stuff like that. It's no secret that basically every single member of RIM's BlackBerry Beta Zone, which launched recently, is already a CrackBerry reader/member. That's a great thing by the way - it means our community is really helping RIM to make their future offerings better.

But the latest mission to come down the BlackBerry Beta Zone pipe is just TOO funny.  They're conducting a BlackBerry Messenger Stress Test. Wonder where they got the idea for that one?! We'll take it as a HUGE compliment. I won't give out the magical PIN they are using for their stress test, but you can read the message they sent out below. I hope they video tape the whole thing and run it on their Inside BB blog. In case you missed it, you can check out CrackBerry's latest BBM stress test video above. Hopefully RIM will fix things up so when we do our next one my device doesn't brick itself. I hope the stress test goes well for them. But I'm not convinced doing it through the Beta Zone is stressful enough. It's about posting it to the CrackBerry homepage so you get that MASSIVE influx of requests that really seems to choke things. If they ever want our help for their next test, we're willing and able! Thanks RIM. You guys rock!!

Continue reading article

A week after embarking upon the mission of discovering the max number of contacts BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 can handle, I'm calling it quits on the experiment. It started off fun, grew a little difficult as my BlackBerry Bold began to bog down, and eventually the device just couldn't take it anymore and begged for mercy. The video above serves as evidence of this nutty/stupid/insane and I think somewhat historic event. Warning: It's a long video - I have over 90 minutes of recorded footage, but chopped it down to 15 minutes (cut out the cursing that occurred towards the end and made sure there were no clips where people's pins are shown). If you can make it to the end you're truly a BlackBerry addict. :)

So what what's the verdict? I still don't know the exact number! The total number of BlackBerry Messenger requests to come in was well over 10,000. I managed to get all the way up 2050 approved contacts, but started receiving the Max Number of Contacts Reached message long before that. But I found by closing chats, deleting some of the requests and leaving all joined BBM groups that even though I would get the max number message,  BlackBerry Messenger would still squeeze in a few more. At the end of the day, I'm not sure that RIM set an actual max number of approved contacts, but rather set a loose limit based on database size or total number of "things' going on in messenger at one time.

Continue reading article