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Whatsapp alternatives?

J

JohnPyn

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 10, 2013
44
0
Hi everyone, as the title says I was wondering if there was any whatsapp alternative but like really similar to that, I tried, line, viber, cubie and some others but I was looking for something like it. If it's also compatible with cydia's couria then it'll be super awesome. Thanks a lot in advance
 
Manatlt said:
WeChat and GroupMe are my favourites. Much better than Whatsapp. :)
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ugcop said:
What is the objection to Whatsapp?
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Uhm... If I may ask... could you tell me some of the "nice"/"cool" features of We Chat and GroupMe? Thanks :)

Whatsapp is great, the only problem is that I don't always receive notifications, it doesn't work really well with couria and the internet notification thing is a little buggy...
 
The problem with these specialty messenger apps is that unless you have a very small group of friends that will follow you to the "new" app you are regulated to the app with the largest number of users. Internationally that is Whatsapp. I have had to pick one and stay with it.
 
ugcop said:
The problem with these specialty messenger apps is that unless you have a very small group of friends that will follow you to the "new" app you are regulated to the app with the largest number of users. Internationally that is Whatsapp. I have had to pick one and stay with it.
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That is true but whatsapp is a little buggy with notification, I often have to check if I got a new message because it does't refresh autoamtically, I'm now trying WappBG from cydia, if that fixes it it'd be great but I doubt it
 
Whatsapp alternatives?

Telegram is behind in features against the competition, only available on iOS and Android and the only thing going for it is it's super- super secure and you could self destruct messages. Apart from those (and WeChat IS secure btw) WeChat has everything Telegram has (except the commitment to being ad free forever, but WeChat is currently ad-free anyway) and more. Including Video and Voice chats. GroupMe is good too, as it also supports more devices.

But Telegram's iOS 7 design is probably the cleanest. I'll give it that.
 
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Facebook Messenger has all the features of WhatsApp, plus it has the added advantage that most of your friends probably already have a Facebook account.
 
sk1wbw said:
What's wrong with iMessage? Most, if not all, cell phone plans have unlimited text messages.
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There are tons of oeople without iOS devices, just as there are tons of people with cell plans that don't have unlimited messaging (or unlimited anything really).
 
C DM said:
There are tons of oeople without iOS devices, just as there are tons of people with cell plans that don't have unlimited messaging (or unlimited anything really).
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It doesn't matter if you don't have an iDevice. It sends normal text messages as well. And who doesn't have unlimited text messages in their data plans?
 
sk1wbw said:
It doesn't matter if you don't have an iDevice. It sends normal text messages as well. And who doesn't have unlimited text messages in their data plans?
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Plenty of people, thus one of the main ideas behind apps like WhatsApp and many like it, and their popularity.
 
C DM said:
Plenty of people, thus one of the main ideas behind apps like WhatsApp and many like it, and their popularity.
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Plenty of people doesn't answer my question. But oh well, EVERYONE who uses a cell phone has a phone number, thus iMessages can be used by every iPhone to send texts to every other cell phone on the planet... Not everyone uses Whatsapp or any of the others. I've never understood the need for any other SMS or texting app. People are texting to other phones.
 
sk1wbw said:
Plenty of people doesn't answer my question. But oh well, EVERYONE who uses a cell phone has a phone number, thus iMessages can be used by every iPhone to send texts to every other cell phone on the planet... Not everyone uses Whatsapp or any of the others. I've never understood the need for any other SMS or texting app. People are texting to other phones.
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I believe the idea is exactly to avoid texting, which is something that has been costly for a lot of people--they would either have to pay for packages with some number of texts or pay per message prices which have been extremely high. Apps like that would help people avoid needing to do that as they would use data, which most people already have and use simply by having a smartphone (which would be needed for those apps) as practically all plans require a data feature to be present for smartphones. And while unlimited messaging has becoming more and more available, there are definitely still many people who are on (often older) plans that don't have that.

If you also factor in being able to message people who don't have phone numbers because they are using a tablet or some other device that can run apps for messaging, and also people messaging internationally (which is still often not covered by unlimited messaging and costs quite a bit), makes the use of these kinds of apps that much more appealing to various people.
 
BBM user here. Probably only because its built into my BlackBerry and all of my friends use it too, but I have yet to have a problem with it, so it gets my recommendations.
 
C DM said:
I believe the idea is exactly to avoid texting, which is something that has been costly for a lot of people--they would either have to pay for packages with some number of texts or pay per message prices which have been extremely high. Apps like that would help people avoid needing to do that as they would use data, which most people already have and use simply by having a smartphone (which would be needed for those apps) as practically all plans require a data feature to be present for smartphones. And while unlimited messaging has becoming more and more available, there are definitely still many people who are on (often older) plans that don't have that.

If you also factor in being able to message people who don't have phone numbers because they are using a tablet or some other device that can run apps for messaging, and also people messaging internationally (which is still often not covered by unlimited messaging and costs quite a bit), makes the use of these kinds of apps that much more appealing to various people.
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People keep missing my point. If you have a phone that is capable of downloading and running and using an application like WhatsApp, then you have a "smart phone" and those phones are required to have separate data plans, and damn near every data plan includes unlimited text messages. Every single carrier that I've had an iPhone with, since the day the 3G came out, had unlimited text messages.
 
sk1wbw said:
People keep missing my point. If you have a phone that is capable of downloading and running and using an application like WhatsApp, then you have a "smart phone" and those phones are required to have separate data plans, and damn near every data plan includes unlimited text messages. Every single carrier that I've had an iPhone with, since the day the 3G came out, had unlimited text messages.
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North Carolina isn't the world, you know.
 
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sk1wbw said:
People keep missing my point. If you have a phone that is capable of downloading and running and using an application like WhatsApp, then you have a "smart phone" and those phones are required to have separate data plans, and damn near every data plan includes unlimited text messages. Every single carrier that I've had an iPhone with, since the day the 3G came out, had unlimited text messages.
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Actually, that's the thing, a lot of people have plans with separate add-on data features for smartphones and texting in package or unlimited form would be extra. Unlimited texting hasn't really made it onto all the carriers until just the last couple of years or so, and even then only on some (newer) plans. There are definitely a lot of people with data but no unlimited messaging.
 
Due to the NSA and general privacy issues an app called threema gained attention in german tech communities. Their servers are in Switzerland, if I'm not
Mistaken and they assure that everything is safe and private. Unfortunately none of my friends use it so I'm stuck with whatsapp if the counterpart cannot use iMessage.
 
Kik Messenger
MessageMe
Viber
WeChat
ChatON
GroupMe (or something like that)

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Kik Messenger
MessageMe
Viber
WeChat
ChatON
GroupMe (or something like that)
Nimbuzz
Textie
 
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