BlackBerry (when was the last time you heard about this company?) has started rolling out an update for BlackBerry Messenger for Android that brings with it a suite of features and enhancements.

The update has simplified the registration process for new users by cutting down on the number of fields to only name, email and password.

Another major change is the ability to add new friends. Until now, the process was pretty cumbersome and required users to send a PIN invite back to someone who had initially invited them to BBM via an email. With this update though, users can directly click on the BBM invite email to add that person to their friend’s list.

Lastly, the BBM team has added 16 new emoticons in this release and renamed the ‘Updates’ tab to ‘Feeds’ to better represent the information it displays. The update is already rolling out for Android users in the Play Store with an iOS update scheduled to go out later tonight.

The BlackBerry team is also promising a special release of BBM for their “BlackBerry boys” in a couple of weeks with many new features.