WhatsApp Messenger (for Android)

Are you still paying for text messaging? Hang onto your wallet. With countless apps offering free or low-cost unlimited text messaging across different operating systems, and even to international numbers, there's no need to spend real money on SMS.

The free-to-download Android app WhatsApp Messenger (free for one year, 99 cents per year thereafter) is the cross-platform instant messaging app people are using around the world, and an Editors' Choice in our book. And as is the case with any great social network, it's the people that make it stick. WhatsApp lets you send unlimited text-like messages to contacts anywhere, and lets you say goodbye to a sizable chunk of your paid texts.

On a global level, WhatsApp is perhaps the most popular of these applications, and a recent update keeps the experience fresh and fun. The company doesn't disclose user data, but according to Google, the Android app alone has been downloaded 1.2 million times from Google Play. Compare that to Skype (650,000 downloads) Viber (300,000 downloads) and Kik (100,000). Feature-wise, it doesn't do anything spectacularly different from its rivals, with its real value coming from its popularity. Furthermore the app is generally less buggy and more frictionless than the competing apps.

Replace Your SMS
For the uninitiated, WhatsApp is an instant messaging platform that interfaces like a smarter version of Android's stock SMS. It runs smoothly on 3G or Wi-Fi, and supports Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone smartphones. WhatsApp has all the customization features you'd find in any other text messaging service, and then some. For instance, you can share your location on Google Maps, attach an image, video, audio clip, or contact to a message, insert a cute emoticon from a large palette of emoji, or change your conversation's wallpaper.

Like Apple iMessage and BlackBerry Messenger, WhatsApp also notifies you when a message has been received on the other side. Your recipient can't pull the "sorry for the late response, just read your text!" excuse like she can with SMS texting. But unlike iMessages, which can sync your conversations across the desktop app on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, you can't keep conversations alive from your computer with WhatsApp. On the other hand, iMessage doesn't work across non-iOS phones, the way WhatsApp does.

A welcome new feature lets you start a group chat for up to ten people, and title the conversation, like "Dan's birthday dinner." And you can leave the group anytime so you're not spammed by irrelevant alerts.? You won't find this in Google Talk.

One thing we'd like to do with WhatsApp that we can't now is add text to photo messages.? As it stands now, you have to send a photo, and then send a separate message, or vice versa. It can be very confusing for a recipient to see a photo without context.

Who's On WhatsApp?
Every WhatsApp Messenger account is tied to a single phone number. When you launch the app for the first time, WhatsApp automatically scans existing phone numbers in your address book and extracts the ones using WhatsApp, so you can begin messaging those people right away. And you might be pleasantly surprised by how many of your contacts already use WhatsApp, as we were. Attaching WhatsApp to a single phone number, rather than an email address, also helps minimize the problem of not being able to find contacts when you don't know which address they used to sign up.

If you can't find your friends, you can easily shoot them an invitation from within the app. A small, but helpful, additional feature is that it automatically adds new buddies when they join the platform?the app requires read/write permissions to your contact information, and it will run a scan every time you add a contact number.

Finally Encrypted
WhatsApp Messenger is based on an open source chat protocol, XMPP, the same one used by Apple iMessage and BlackBerry Messenger, and has been the target of a few successful hacks. For instance, last year security researchers were able to intercept and read WhatsApp messages by sniffing WhatsApp data over insecure Wi-Fi networks.

Fortunately, the current version encrypts your messages so that even if someone captures this data in transmission, he or she won't be able to read them.

If you have friends and family all over the world, WhatsApp Messenger is indispensible for its free, fast, unlimited messaging and slick interface. But if you're satisfied with your existing instant messaging services, like Google Talk, Skype, or Yahoo Messenger, WhatsApp doesn't offer much more in terms of features. It's really about the network of people who have already joined, and the group on WhatsApp is strong?and growing stronger every day.

For more Android app reviews, see:
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