Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
How do these SMS apps work?
- Thread starter yalag
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
then how do my friends reply? doesn't make sense. do these apps actually let me SMS with my friends?
if you send a text from the app all your friends have to do is reply back. If they want to text you and not reply to one you have already sent from the app then they simple send it to your yalag@textnow.me address
Your missing the part that you can SMS to a email address. This allows them to reply to your texts which go the the SMS apps servers and are then passed on to you.
but this doesn't make sense. You are saying my friend can jsut reply back to the SMS I send him, and the reply will magically show up in my app? How can this be? The apps have some kind of ability to intercept SMS sent to my phone?
No.
You send a message from the app. It includes all the information needed to respond to that message should they choose to reply. If they do, it's replied to and sent to the applications server. Which is then sent to your phone via the application you're using.
Don't worry about how it works. Just realize it does. You do not get a phone number that they can text. They can only initiate the conversation via the email address you choose when you first run the application.
SMS doesn't mean that it needs to be sent to a phone. It can be sent to anything so long as there is a necessary gateway in between that converts the information around.
No. Let's say you are using Textnow Unlimited by Enflick. Enflick has their own servers that the iPhone app communicates with to send and receive messages. Enflick has SMS gateways to various carriers. When you send a message with Textnow Unlimited, the message goes to an Enflick server and is send out via an SMS gateway to the carrier. When your friend responds to your SMS, it goes back to Enflick and is sent to your phone when your open the app. They use Apple's Push notification server to push the notification. If your friend wants to initiate an SMS message, he needs to send it to the SMS email address you get from Enflick.
I hope that makes it more clear.
S-
Thanks for the explanation. What is the instruction like? Is it to reply with email? Does anyone have a screenshot of what the SMS is like when my friends see it?
Sorry for the question, just wanted to make sure I know what is going on before making a purchase.
It looks like a normal SMS. The big pitfall is that you do not receive a phone number that they can send to. The messages get to you via an SMS gateway. It's fairly complicated but it works.
The SMS will include the name you enter into the application, the email address you choose to use in the application's setup (yourname@service.something), and your message.
It basically looks like a text message without a phone number attached.
It works fine. There are a few issues with phones that support threading of messages. Such as the iPhone, the fake number that the recipient responds to changes from time to time and will start new threads making it look like it was sent from someone else.
It's the cost of having free text messaging. If you want things to work perfectly. Pay for the text messaging plan from your provider. If you want something that works with a few gotchas here and there but costs significantly less buy one of the applications like Textnow, TextFree, or FreeSMS or whatever. Just realize that it isn't perfect. But does as they advertise.
I was explaining the ability of the app, not how SMS works. Thats a different question...