Short message service (SMS) is an integral part of our lives today. In fact, there are many people who prefer SMSing to making phone calls, notwithstanding the steep decline in call rates in recent times. That said, sending SMSes can be an expensive proposition, especially if you are sending them to a person in another city or worse, country. Or if you are on roaming!
Which is why mobile Instant Messaging (IM) is so handy. Thanks to some rather innovative applications, you can actually exchange text messages with your friends online without using SMS on your cellphone. All you need is a GPRS connection that enables you to access the internet on your mobile and the right software, and you can actually cut down on your SMS bill.
Mobile instant messaging has been around for a few years now. However, most mobile IM applications came with price tags—you either had to pay to download them to your phone or shell out an annual subscription fee. What’s more, they were often only available for high-end (read “colossally expensive”) phones.
However, that has been changing over the past few years, thanks to the dramatic increase in the world’s cellphone-toting population.
Yahoo! has even made it possible for users to access its IM messaging service on its WAP site without having to download any software on to their cellphones. And Yahoo! Messenger is one of the services that form part of the Yahoo!Go passage that is being bundled with select Nokia phones these days.
There are plenty of free software options for non-Yahoo! users too. MSN chat users can download eMSN Mobile for their cellphones—it works like a treat, has plenty of features (including customising photographs) and can run on most phones.
Similarly, those addicted to Google Talk can try Morange, which also gives users access to Gmail, contacts and RSS feeds, but is at its best when handling the chat function. What’s more, Morange comes in two versions—one for advanced phones and one for ‘normal’ ones!
But if you are seeking an SMS-like IM experience, then try out Go Talk Mobile, a mobile instant messenger for Google Talk. Unlike other mobile IM applications that one has to start up and then exit whenever you have to do something else on your phone (say, look at the address book, or play a game), you can keep GoogleTalk running in the background all the time, without having to exit. The phone will vibrate and emit a little tune whenever you receive a message, which will pop up on the screen.
A word of warning, though—do not expect to see features like voice chat and webcam chats on mobile IMs. On a cellphone, the IM is largely restricted to sending and receiving messages, although some do allow users to swap pictures and the odd music file.
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