Unless your carrier lets you text out of the country, an IM app is the best chance at keeping you connected to others. No need for a cellphone connection: Using a -Fi connection to message people is particularly helpful if you’re out of the country or in a spotty coverage area.
Top text messaging apps android#
But since it’s iOS-only, you’ll need to pick your favorite Android alternative. This is the strength of Apple’s iMessage, of course. Using an instant messaging app adds a good flow to the conversation because you can pick up from where you left off. Seamless conversations: Conversations can get disjointed when you switch from chatting on the desktop via IM to texting on the phone. This type of tool is a hy way to find out if someone is going to be late for that meetup. It’s a slick feature, though Hangouts isn’t the only app to send your current place in the world.
Some will also show you when someone is replying, before the message comes through.Ĭation sharing: As an example, with Hangouts when someone asks, “where are you?” the app will automatically offer to share your location. It’s great for letting you now you may have to bug that particular person again if they didn’t read your message. Read notification: Many apps give some type of indication as to whether or not the recipient has read the message, usually through a small icon in the conversation view. Here are a few examples of what they do better.ĪtsApp, Hangouts, Messenger (left to right) are among the most popular messaging apps for Android. RELATED : Carl Pei Continues Building Nothing Phone 1 Hype with a New Pre-Order Pass IM app advantages over SMSĪs indicated, instant messaging on your smartphone is a vastly superior method of communicating with others. These mobile messaging apps are frequently called “over-the-top” (OTT) messaging, as the services operate on the Internet as an alternative to what is offered by your carrier. Fortunately, this competition has brought about a lot of innovation in the messaging space. There are plenty of competitors, as being the hub for all your communication gives these companies a chance to hook you to their ecosystem. Though IM has been on Android a while, ’s most ambitious foray was through Hangouts. This is why IM was first popularized on desktop computers by services like AOs AIM, ICQ, eventually Talk, which was the forerunner to Hangouts.
As such, you just need an Internet connection to communicate, whereas with SMS your device needs to be connected to a cellular network. Messages are sent over the ‘net through the servers of whichever company runs the service. SMS messaging is still around, so much so that built a dedicated app just for SMS MMS. It’s part of the GSM protocol doesn’t require a data connection. That limitation remains in effect, though a modern text messaging apps will turn longer messages into an MMS (Multimedia messaging) in order to workaround that limitation. Messages were also capped in length at 160 characters (barely more than a tweet). It’s a stard communication platform built for for early days of mobile communication, when texting someone meant flipping open your phone trying to communicate with the buttons on the dial pad. Here are a few thoughts on why using one of the many instant messaging apps offers a compelling alternative to text messaging. Shing your friends onto a messaging service remains the biggest challenge, but it’s worth the effort (well depending on your friends). But all the innovation extra features that come with apps like Hangouts or Facebook Messenger are hard to ignore: you can share your location in real-time, sync up the conversation with desktop apps, stay in touch over -Fi if you are without a cell signal. t someone’s phone number in your contacts then just text away. But like the fax machine llines, it’s managed to stick around. That means making the break with stard text messaging, or SMS. It’s actually a rather old technology, harking back to the days of the flip phone. So, like anything else, you should seek out the best apps services to do it. Messaging is probably one of the most common tasks you perform on your smartphone.