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The era of wi-fi has opened numerous doors to free mobile communication. Our digital connection has moved us beyond the costs of SMS and MMS messages, and multiple messaging apps have been created to benefit us, the consumers. But which apps are good? We’ll take a look at five apps that have really stood out.
Viber
This is quite a possible contender for the title of being the best. Just like your phone’s SMS service, you can send both text and picture messages. Unlike your SMS service, it also works off-3G signal across wi-fi, so you can use it with Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, iOS and other wi-fi supporting devices.
Google Hangouts
This app, readily usable as a text replacement, is completely run on data and wi-fi. It brings messaging, photo-sharing, group text conversations and other functions together smoothly. The app is available for Android and iOS just as it is on your usual computer. You can make audio and video calls, have group chats, and share data totally for free.
This app is currently in use by hundreds of millions of people, and available on Blackberry, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. When you register, the program looks through your telephone number contacts list and finds everybody who’s also downloaded WhatsApp and automatically adds them to your app’s contact list. As is the case with most messaging apps, communication is only possible between people who have it. All things considered, this one is quite possibly the easiest to use, especially if you’re new to messaging apps.
Facebook Messenger
Argumentum ad populum. I believe in it because it’s popular. Facebook Messenger is available for iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone, and at last count, there were over a billion people who use it. Plus, if you’ve confirmed your phone number on the actual Facebook website, then you can still receive and respond to messages via your very phone even if you don’t actually have it installed. Using this app, you can send and receive text and picture messages and make wi-fi voice calls.
ChompSMS/Textra
ChompSMS is an SMS stand-in that’s minimalistic, simple, and highly functional. What’s really great about this app is that it actually doesn’t matter who you’re sending messages to because it actually operates on its own network, and so you can use it to send messages to anybody for a tiny fee depending on what number you’re sending to. If you subscribe to a pre-paid phone plan, or if your usual company charges you left and right, this is probably ideal. The programmers who developed ChompSMS have mostly moved on to its follow-up app, Textra, which has an added group chat and other additional features. While sending messages with ChompSMS/Textra can be done to any mobile number anywhere, in doing so, it costs coins to send them, so it’s something to keep in mind.
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