BBM for Android landed today and one of the biggest complaints about the app is the persistent alert that sits in the notification drawer. BlackBerry included a setting that allows you turn off this persistent notification, but it may turn off all notifications for the app.
This choice of a persistent notification versus losing your notifications is a by-product of how Android works. BlackBerry messenger is a messaging app that needs to always run in the background for alerts to work properly within the app. Google requires a persistent notification alert for apps that want to run continuously in the background. It may be annoying to have a notification drawer filled with these alerts, but it’s a requirement that’s meant to help users by letting them know which apps are always running.
When you toggle off this persistent notification, BBM works just like an other Android app and will run in the background until the OS needs more RAM. At that point, BBM could be closed by the OS, and you won’t receive any incoming message alerts. This shut down process happens silently in the background, which means you won’t know when the app has been terminated and when it is still running.
If you want to be alerted each and every time you get a new BBM message, then don’t touch that toggle and leave that notification alone. If you don’t mind losing touch with your BBMs, then feel free to turn off the persistent alert and enjoy your clean notification bar.
