[dkonigs]

Thanks for all your great work on the app. Were you at Whatsapp when the Facebook buyout happened, how did people feel about that? Did you get shares that made you super-rich?

Yes, I was there when the buyout happened. It was quite a rollercoaster ride, but more involved than many people think. What the public saw as one or two press releases, was actually about 8 months of due diligence and legal/accounting/regulatory paperwork.

Everyone involved was greatly incentivized to stick around for another 3-4 years. Those incentives are now up, which is the real reason you're now periodically reading about high profile departures from the company.

[dkonigs]

I have one question about the WA android used on BB10. Can you quantify the use of the battery with the apk file vs the native BB10 file??

No, I really cannot answer technical questions about WA Android. However, it is likely that the battery use will be worse than the native BB10 version. This is because the native BB10 version uses pushes to wake up its network connection, while the Android version has to "long connect" and thus keep its network connection open indefinitely.

[katxeus]

Earlier this year, a developer @ePeterso2 like you gave us a heart warming post about his involvement with a team for the official BB10 clock app. http://forums.crackberry.com/showthread.php?t=1140464
It's amazing how the effort behind tech we love and depend on can easily be misjudged especially by numbers!

So, we're there any easter eggs in the app?

Posted via CB10

[Jason Page]

No, I really cannot answer technical questions about WA Android. However, it is likely that the battery use will be worse than the native BB10 version. This is because the native BB10 version uses pushes to wake up its network connection, while the Android version has to "long connect" and thus keep its network connection open indefinitely.

This is one of my many concerns with Android and you just answered where this concern comes from, the difference between "pushes" and always on is something I'd like to be able to address with my phone concept. Thank you for bringing this up.

[conite]

This is one of my many concerns with Android and you just answered where this concern comes from, the difference between "pushes" and always on is something I'd like to be able to address with my phone concept. Thank you for bringing this up.

Full Android handles push just fine.

[dkonigs]

Full Android handles push just fine.

Yeah, I was specifically referring to the Android app in the context of the BB10 Android Runtime... Which lacks Google Play Services, and I don't think supports Google's push services.

[conite]

Yeah, I was specifically referring to the Android app in the context of the BB10 Android Runtime... Which lacks Google Play Services, and I don't think supports Google's push services.

I just wanted to make sure Jason understood that.

[Jason Page]

Just want to re-iterate what I understood in from this:

Android supports push at discretion of the app developer.
BB10 apps requires push for BB10 apps
Android on BB10 does not allow Google Pushes; inducing that Android on BB10 is always connected.

Correct?

[conite]

Just want to re-iterate what I understood in from this:

Android supports push at discretion of the app developer.
BB10 apps requires push for BB10 apps
Android on BB10 does not allow Google Pushes; inducing that Android on BB10 is always connected.

Correct?

There are various ways to perform push on full Android.

There are some successful push implementations on the Android Runtime, but not without some battery hits - from tiny to huge.

[bobshine]

I remember at the beginning of BB10 that there was a period when Whatsapp wasn’t going to develop an app for BB10.

Blackberry was actually “officially” backing a third party app that would allow access to whatsapp on BB10.

Can you give us a bit of insight on what happened during that period?

[dkonigs]

Just want to re-iterate what I understood in from this:

Android supports push at discretion of the app developer.
BB10 apps requires push for BB10 apps
Android on BB10 does not allow Google Pushes; inducing that Android on BB10 is always connected.

Correct?

Correct.

I believe that BlackBerry did implement something where the app developer could package an Android app in a BAR and make it capable of receiving pushes through the BlackBerry infrastructure, but that's something that obviously could not be supported by a user-side-loaded Android APK.

[JECE]

First, a test:
What was the last feature added to WhatsApp on BB10? I remember asking for a fix shortly before the end.

Also, why did exporting to Android require external storage? I never inserted an SD card, so I never made an Android chat backup from my BB10 WhatsApp.

[JECE]

Other than these:

I think the last major user-visible "normal" feature I added was skin-tone selection for emojis. Meanwhile, the last "advanced" feature I added was chat history export to Android.

[dkonigs]

First, a test:
What was the last feature added to WhatsApp on BB10? I remember asking for a fix shortly before the end.

I really don't remember.

Also, why did exporting to Android require external storage? I never inserted an SD card, so I never made an Android chat backup from my BB10 WhatsApp.

Because actually getting the data from one phone to another has lots of "user-friendly product design" challenges that have resulted in massive procrastination on taking this sort of feature seriously on every other platform. I side-stepped a lot of that, by simply creating an Android-compatible "data directory" on an SD card that you could move to another phone.

Its bad enough that half the people on here got confused by having to use a file manager on Android to copy it into the "internal memory" of their Android phones (which Android called the "SD card" for legacy reasons).

It would be even worse if everyone also got confused by having to use a file manager or USB cable or network transfer utility to get the directory off their BB10 phone in the first place, provided that they can even figure out where that directory is.

So really, I did it that way to keep the process as simple as possible. In retrospect, I could have always added an option to select the destination, but I was really creating this for people migrating from BB10 to another phone (the Priv was coming out at that time).

Finally, this was a feature I kinda built and shipped secretly. I know I would have never gotten "approval" for it if I asked, but I didn't want to deny all the capable users the ability to take their data with them.

[elfabio80]

In One of your posts you mentioned that the decreasing number of users in BB10 and the EOL de facto status of this platform convinced WA people to abandon BB10.

What's the difference with another EOL like Windows Mobile 10? If I am not wrong it is still receiving updates this app. Is it possible that Microsoft plays a role on this matter?

[dkonigs]

In One of your posts you mentioned that the decreasing number of users in BB10 and the EOL de facto status of this platform convinced WA people to abandon BB10.

What's the difference with another EOL like Windows Mobile 10? If I am not wrong it is still receiving updates this app. Is it possible that Microsoft plays a role on this matter?

Whether Windows Phone is an actively developed, or effectively abandoned, platform has been somewhat ambiguous for a long time. However, unlike BlackBerry, Microsoft actually recognized the relevance of the low-end market. This meant that Windows Phone had a much larger userbase before it started to fall out of favor.
(Windows Phone also never got the sheer amount of hate that everyone has been constantly foisting on BlackBerry since 2011, so people were more willing to give the platform a fair chance to compete on its own merits... That being said, having known the developers doing WA on Windows Phone, I'm not very impressed by those "merits".)

At this point, there are still developers doing maintenance work on the Windows Phone client, but its not at the same level of effort as any of the other platforms.

P.S. When I say "Windows Phone", I'm referring to the entire line of Microsoft phone platforms from "Windows Phone 7.x" through "Windows Mobile 10". (even if the earlier versions are now discontinued)

[D BB]

This would require making changes to the app itself. Which, in turn, would require circumventing the code-signing/permissions infrastructure on the BB10 platform. So you're kinda dead-in-the-water on this idea, unless you've managed to "root" a BB10 device and disable its app security policies.

Thanks!
So shouldn't be a problem with Symbian OS right? Probably the biggest "dead OS" community out there.


Posted via CB10

[dkonigs]

Thanks!
So shouldn't be a problem with Symbian OS right? Probably the biggest "dead OS" community out there.


Posted via CB10

Actually, it might be a problem. The BB10 client is the only EOL'd client that actually implements the latest version of the protocol/encryption used for connecting to the WA servers (this is completely separate from the end-to-end encryption). So when/if they finally discontinue accepting the older protocol, platform ID hacks won't be enough. (As far as I can tell, none of the existing 3rd party client projects have implemented this latest protocol. Of course none of them appear to be very actively maintained either.)

[iHadLastBB]

Ask me anything!

(* I may not be able to answer everything you might ask, but I'll try to be as open as I can.)

Maybe I missed the Q＆A, but I'm interested in one thing. WhatsApp was 100％ native BB10 .bar app or it was android rebuild app so it could work with BB10 android runtime?

In other words, WhatsApp app was running on android runtime or natively on BB10 system?

[conite]

Maybe I missed the Q＆A, but I'm interested in one thing. WhatsApp was 100％ native BB10 .bar app or it was android rebuild app so it could work with BB10 android runtime?

In other words, WhatsApp app was running on android runtime or natively on BB10 system?

Native.

[dkonigs]

There's one interesting tidbit I'd like to mention in here. After the BB10 client went EOL, we actually found a new use for the codebase.

If you've seen any articles out there on this new product:
WhatsApp Business API

Its actually based on the continued development of the BB10 client codebase. We basically stripped off the GUI, removed the BB10 platform-specific bits, added an API layer on the front-end, and packaged it up in a Docker container. (Oh, we also switched the database from SQLite to MySQL and made a lot of changes to better suit it to higher-performance usage.)

This is because, under the surface, a BB10 app is really not that different from a plain old Qt/C++ app. While the GUI and integration hooks are definitely platform-specific, the general development framework is not. As such, the code is actually more portable than an Android or iPhone app would ever be.

I actually worked on this project during my last year and a half at WhatsApp, after stints on a few other platforms. Of course now there's a whole team behind it.

[conite]

There's one interesting tidbit I'd like to mention in here. After the BB10 client went EOL, we actually found a new use for the codebase.

If you've seen any articles out there on this new product:
WhatsApp Business API

Its actually based on the continued development of the BB10 client codebase. We basically stripped off the GUI, removed the BB10 platform-specific bits, added an API layer on the front-end, and packaged it up in a Docker container. (Oh, we also switched the database from SQLite to MySQL and made a lot of changes to better suit it to higher-performance usage.)

This is because, under the surface, a BB10 app is really not that different from a plain old Qt/C++ app. While the GUI and integration hooks are definitely platform-specific, the general development framework is not. As such, the code is actually more portable than an Android or iPhone app would ever be.

I actually worked on this project during my last year and a half at WhatsApp, after stints on a few other platforms. Of course now there's a whole team behind it.

I'm curious. How big would a team like that be?

And would it be comparable to the regular app team?

[hplovecraft]

Like others before, I just wanted to say thanks for your work on the app.

WhatsApp was the one app I was using having constant updates.

[iHadLastBB]

I'm curious. How big would a team like that be?

And would it be comparable to the regular app team?

As I understand @dkonigs worked alone all the time, one man army? How comparable is this to you?

[conite]

As I understand @dkonigs worked alone all the time, one man army? How comparable is this to you?

I'm asking about the 2 Android app teams.