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Let’s face it. We live in a socially connected world. There’s almost no excuse for not delivering a message to someone, especially if they own a smartphone. Today we take a quick look at some of my favourite smartphone messengers:
BlackBerry Messenger (BBM)
Still probably the most popular smartphone messaging service in the region, BBM allows users to text, talk and as of the release of BB10; video chat with each other. Each user is assigned their own PIN and it is by this contacts add each other. (Food for thought: Although PIN stands for Personal Identification Number, this PIN is a hexadecimal and therefore includes letters A through F).
Other characteristics include:
- Personalise with status and display picture
- “Recent updates” lets you see contact’s status changes
- BBM Smilies
- Share pictures, videos, voice notes and files (6MB Max)
- Group Messaging
- While a BlackBerry Data plan must be activated to use, social plans can be very affordable
- Can only be used on a blackberry device (duh!)
WhatsApp Messenger
So you don’t own a Blackberry device but still looking for that BBM experience? Behold! I give you, WhatsApp! Another popular messenger, WhatsApp lets users send text messages to contacts in the phone book who has WhatsApp installed. (no PINs needed here)
Other characteristics include:
- Personalise with status and display picture
- Emoji emoticons
- Share pictures, videos, audio, contacts and current location
- Group Messaging (up to 30 people)
- Cross messaging between Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Phone, Symbian and Nokia S40 devices
- 1 year trial period, $0.99US per year there after
ChatON
It took me a while to write about ChatON because when I downloaded and searched my phone book for contacts, I could count my contacts on one hand. So I never really got to have a ChatON experience. That’s unfortunate because it looks like a great app! Despite its unpopularity, it seems to be a great approach by developers Samsung offering rich communication between contacts and numerous features unlike any other.
Other features include:
- Personalise with status and display picture
- Emoji emoticons
- Share pictures, animations, videos, audio, files, calender, contacts and current location
- Group Messaging
- Cross messaging between Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Bada OS, Windows Phone, Feature phones, Web and Windows and Mac computers devices
- Sync ChatON with up to 5 devices
- much much more!
This post was originally longer but I figured I’d cut the rope here so I don’t hang myself by overwhelming (or boring?) my readers. Other messengers I would have liked to add however included: PingMe Messenger, Touch (formally PingChat!), LiveProfile and Kik Messenger. But I’ll leave that for another time.
So leave a comment below and tell me what’s your preferred messenger, even if its not listed in this post, and why.
Peace. Love. Respect.
SkinnyTechGuy
Twitter: @duane_best
nice!!!!!!! Thanks for the info and options.