Posts tagged messaging
WhatsApp Messenger for iPhone
92 years ago
I’ve been trying to find the perfect push notification iPhone-2-iPhone messaging solution. An app that falls between instant messaging and SMS, without the cost of SMS. The two top ones on the App Store are Ping! and WhatsApp. I reviewed Ping! recently, but I just had to try out WhatsApp to see how it compared.
WhatsApp differs from Ping! in that it uses your phone number and your contact list rather than a PIN/username, so there’s no signing up or having to pass a username onto friends – and no need to add new contacts – your whole iPhone contact list is available within the app. If you have friends with an iPhone then all they need to do is download WhatsApp [iTunes link] which is currently absolutely free, then when you open the app you’ll see which of your contacts already have the app installed by looking through the Favourites list. You also have the option to send an invite to your other friends so they can download the app and interact with you.
The advantage WhatsApp has over Ping!, for me, is the timestamps are correct. You’d have to take a guess when a contact had sent you a Ping! message as the timestamps would read whatever they wanted at any given time. The UI in WhatsApp is also far more attractive than Ping! – and the icon is a lot prettier. That matters. On sending a message you get a little notification tone, much like in the default SMS app on the iPhone. You can also see when one of your contacts is online and composing a reply – ‘typing’ will be displayed under their name at the top of the messaging window.
In WhatsApp you can set a status from the ones given as default such as Available, Sleeping, Busy, In a Meeting and many more, or you can create your own such as ‘iPhone docked and charging’ – a status which indicates that I am unable to reply right away…and something I find myself using a lot! In the settings you can switch status notifications on so that you will get an instant push notification when one of your contacts changes their WhatsApp status.
I can see many people using Ping! alongside WhatsApp. Ping! is the better alternative for chatting to online friends who perhaps you don’t feel comfortable about giving your phone number to, but WhatsApp is probably more suited to those that you do know and trust enough to share your vCard with.
WhatsApp is currently free so there’s no excuse for you and your iPhone friends not to check this one out.
[rating:5/5]
Ping!
32 years ago
Yesterday I downloaded a messaging application called Ping! from the app store, following a recommendation by a friend. Earlier in the day I had been looking at WhatsApp, but since I wasn’t too keen on sharing my phone number with online friends, I gave Ping! a whirl.
Above is a shot of a section of my iPhone home screen. As you can see, Ping! is there. My home screen is reserved for my favourite and most opened apps only. You can see where this review is going.
Ping! is an iPhone to iPhone messaging app, oh and the iPod touch. A cross between IM and SMS. Unlike the latter, it doesn’t incur any additional carrier charges. It works over wifi and 3G on the iPhone and wifi only on the iPod touch. A friend sent me a Ping! notification via GPRS yesterday. Worked a charm. Ping! works with push notifications so that messages can be delivered anywhere in the world, instantly.
The great thing about Ping! is you don’t have to share your phone number with anyone. Once you’ve downloaded the app you simply pick an ID (choose carefully, this can’t be changed currently) then tell your iPhone/iPod touch using friends about the app and once they install it you can send messages to eachother for free.
One of the refreshing things about this app is it’s unique notification tone. A lot of apps out there use the default text messaging sound which can cause confusion, but Ping! gives us a lovely “ping ping” sound which I have recorded especially for you to sample, here…
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I’ve been messaging a few of my iPhone using friends over the past 24 hours and it’s a great way to keep in touch or just send a reminder to eachother. Nicky notified me via Ping! when the news about Tweetie 2 broke, since I wasn’t going to be at the computer, so as soon as I heard my Ping! I knew he was bringing good news.
I wouldn’t say the app was perfect just yet, but I expect future updates will change that. I had a couple of app crashes when deleting a typo and the timestamps aren’t reliable. But, all the time I was using it, the server status remained green and OK. There appears to be a character limit per message but at the moment I’m not entirely sure what that is. I sent a message more than around 200 characters to a friend last night but was told it got cut off at a certain point. I’ve e-mailed the Ping! developer to ask what the maximum character limit is and I’ll report back once I get a response. So, to be on the safe side don’t natter for too long, like me 
[UPDATE]
The character limit per message is 150. In the absence of a character counter within the app, you’ll have to rely on guesswork. I hope we can expect a character counter in a future update.
Overall I am absolutely and totally impressed with Ping! It’s currently free for a limited time only, so head over to the app store and grab it today.
[rating:4/5]
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