This generation will never know the pain of relying on SMS to be in touch with friends and colleagues. SMS were unreliable and slow. You didn’t know if the SMS you sent was even received by your friend or colleague. But this pain is no more as today’s world is ruled by IM or Instant Messaging and the SMS itself has evolved to a great extent. IM is reliable, fast and you know if the message was successfully received by the receiver. With 3G and 4G connectivity in every device, IM has become increasingly popular. Here are some of the most popular instant messaging app for android devices.
You may have recently heard the news of Social Networking giant Facebook bought WhatsApp for nearly $19 billion. This is, in my opinion, is the most utilized and well-known instant messaging app across many platforms. With its incredible easy-to-use interface, it has ruled the IM world. But even the most popular instant messaging app has its flaws. Though the interface is simple and easy, this is also it biggest flaw. The interface is just too simple, which makes it appear dull, boring and outdated. Although you can send sound clips and videos, it has to be recorded from the app. User cannot upload it from the gallery. But who knows, maybe its dull and simple UI is where the beauty lies.
You may have heard about Snapchat’s unique privacy feature where the messages, images and videos you shared will disappear or “self-destruct” after the receiver is done viewing them. This app has grown larger, offering users many new features like the ability to create “Stories”. However there are some users who complain that its services has moved away from its initial privacy oriented past, but hey, nothing’s perfect.
Even though Blackberry has fallen down the hill, struggling to sell its smartphones, making its BBM instant messaging available across multiple platforms was a hit. Even if BlackBerry liquidates, its BBM will continue to live on. BBM offers excellent Security and Privacy features.
The software giant that powers up your smartphone has created this app. Google’s Google Hangout maybe far from brilliant and fully optimized, but it offers excellent services that we can’t deny. This app does pretty much everything WhatsApp does with a pinch of extras like voice calling. We’re familiar with Google’s policy of “One Account To Rule Them All”, so all your Gmail contacts are available here, allowing you to chat via Hangouts and/or even send a SMS.
This name is certainly not unfamiliar and is undoubted mother of internet calling and video chat all across the world. Though Skype isn’t the only one to offer such feature but is it the most popular one. Crawling the way up from the life on desktop, it has reached your palms. Skype may be the oldest but it’s not perfect as you cannot directly message from your phonebook, or Facebook contacts or Gmail contacts and is also lacking social aspect.
Viber:
This is another popular name in the IM world. you can chat, voice message, send attachments and even call your viber contacts and phone contacts. Viber syncs with your existing phone contacts which gives you the ability to call using viber even if they don’t have viber installed. Closing the app can be annoying as pressing back button won’t help; you have to either sign out or force close the app from app settings. with frequent updates, viber has improved a lot from its previous versions.
