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RANT! RIM & Facebook Annoying BlackBerry Users

by Ronen Halevy on Dec 26th, 2007 at 12:22 pm EST
11 Comments »
 

FacebookappforblackberryIt seems like T-mobile has decided to push out a link to all of their BlackBerry subscribers for their Facebook application. I have already received two emails about it so I thought I would let everybody else in on the details.

RIM and T-mobile have pushed out a link to many T–mobile BlackBerry users that puts a Facebook icon on their homescreen. The link is not the actual application but takes you to a page where you can install the application. What has been peeving many T-mobile users is that you cannot uninstall this homescreen link and you have to just hide it.

There is a way to remove the link by deleting its corresponding service book but it will come back every time you push your service books from the BIS web interface. I know many people who enjoy the Facebook application but pushing a new link without any warning has annoyed many BlackBerry users who have no use for the application.

Personally this practice of pushing out homescreen links (Advertisements in my opinion) has always pissed me off. If you are an AT&T subscriber you will know what I mean. AT&T pushes out no less than 10 of these homescreen icons the first time you power on your device!

I ended up just creating a “junk” folder on my Curve just to hide these annoying homescreen links. I always admired RIM for not putting a bunch of upselling crapware on their devices but this changed my opinion. If the RIM OS is capable of asking you for permission to allow 3rd party applications to access certain features why cant they ask us for permission to install homescreen links.

I am trying to fiddle around with the permissions on my BlackBerry to block these pushed links with no luck so far. Any ideas?

The interesting part about this whole link is that it seems that it was done by RIM and not T-mobile as you can see in the last paragraph of an article on MercuryNews.com.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 and is filed under News.
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11 Comments to “RANT! RIM & Facebook Annoying BlackBerry Users”

  1. Posted by: luc-mobile
    December 26, 2007 at 7:53 pm EST

    Hum. I’m not so sure this is really that bad. My BB also came with two “compulsory” installation links: GTalk and Yahoo! Messenger. It’s not that bad. I would have taken a lot longer to realize they existed if those links weren’t there. I was interested. Ended up with GTalk, hid the Y!M link inside a “junk” folder. If anyone doesn’t want a “junk” folder, they can just “hide” the link. It’s not difficult. I suppose a lot of people in the U.S. will be interested in the Facebook app. Sure, there are shortcuts to all those applications in the browser’s home page, but the user could change the browser’s home page and even forget it exists. I even wonder if some carriers don’t already ship the phones with a different browser home page out of the box.

  2. Posted by: rndy
    December 27, 2007 at 2:01 am EST

    Log-in to my.t-mobile.com and opt out of all of the advertising. There is a spot to select not to be contacted by t-mobiles partners.

  3. Posted by: Ronen Halevy
    December 27, 2007 at 10:20 am EST

    Yes they do ship with other browser homepages but those are easy to change. It seems like rogers has also pushed out the facebook link in Canada. The funny part is that the carriers blame RIM and RIM is blaming the carriers :)

    Rndy I have asked a friend to try out that Opt out option you mentioned and then resend her service books and it still sent the facebook browser link. I just wish you could uninstall them! I can understand if they want to default some functionality but they should leave you the option of getting rid of it

  4. Posted by: rndy
    December 27, 2007 at 10:29 am EST

    You’ll still get the link push to your browser, but you shouldn’t get the icons popping up. As with the browser links, I don’t notice because I keep all but the blackberry bookmarks folder collapsed, and that sort of stuff usually goes into the links folder.

  5. Posted by: Ronen Halevy
    December 27, 2007 at 10:32 am EST

    Oh interesting I will have to check that out. The best I have come up with is just hiding them in a junk folder. This used to really peve me when I had an 8800 and did not have the option to put items in a folder like the 8310

  6. Posted by: luc-mobile
    December 27, 2007 at 12:02 pm EST

    Dynoplex released, just one month ago, a new version of freeware eFile. It’s called eFile Pro. This one is not freeware and has an added feature: it saves attachments to the SD card, which a vanilla Blackberry can’t do. You can read a discussion on that here: http://tinyurl.com/2ol8jj
    .
    Meanwhile, I tested their other product eWord, and I can confirm that it does save and read .doc files in the SD card. That’s why I assume eCell will do that too. Of course I can be wrong, but the chances are good. All their products have a time-limited trial version anyway. It can’t hurt.
    .
    I didn’t notice any performance impact with eWord. Actually, I was pretty impressed. It has a nice interface and more functionality than I expected. I didn’t buy it because I can’t really see myself editing Word documents with such a small screen and tiny keyboard, and that’s not the application’s fault.
    I also installed eCell, but just for long enough to see what it looked like. I wasn’t really interested in it. I didn’t try to open or save files to the SD card with it.

  7. Posted by: Jeatin
    July 25, 2008 at 11:15 pm EST

    You could always go to service manuals and erase the facebook one. That got rid of it for me.

  8. Posted by: Alexis
    October 15, 2008 at 9:49 pm EST

    I had the same problem with my Blackberry 8700g with the annoying facebook icon problem especially because on the 8700 you are unable to move your icons to where you want them….but…I found the solution to delet the icon…go to your options and then to “Advanced Options” then click on “Service Book” then scroll down to where it says “BC_Virtual_Preload_Facebook’ and click the menu button & then click “Delete” and that’s it…the preloaded annoying facebook icon is not deleted…Hope this helps :D

  9. Posted by: Alexis
    October 15, 2008 at 9:51 pm EST

    I had the same problem with my Blackberry 8700g with the annoying facebook icon problem especially because on the 8700 you are unable to move your icons to where you want them….but…I found the solution to delete the icon…go to your options and then to “Advanced Options” then click on “Service Book” then scroll down to where it says “BC_Virtual_Preload_Facebook’ and click the menu button & then click “Delete” and that’s it…the preloaded annoying facebook icon is now deleted…Hope this helps :D

  10. Posted by: James
    November 20, 2008 at 5:45 am EST

    Alexis, you are right! Go to Options, Advanced Options then Service Book and delete some stupid icons.

  11. Posted by: bill f
    February 20, 2009 at 4:52 pm EST

    Thank you Alexis!