January 11, 2011
By Editor

If you have a Nokia smartphone (err… or any smartphone), chances are you’ve got a few SMS requests from your mates, prompting you to download WhatsApp. WhatsApp is hands down, the best and cheapest way to keep in touch with all of your mates, irrespective of  make / manufacture smartphone they own (Symbian, Android, Apple or BlackBerry)  or where they are.

How does it work?

WhatsApp, as the name suggests, is an application you need to download onto your phone and it will run discreetly in the background until you send or receive a message. It uses your 3G or WiFi (when available) connection to send and receive messages. As opposed to SMS, which is an older messaging system with limited functionality and higher cost, WhatsApp Messenger provides more functionality at a fraction of the cost. WhatsApp only works among users who have the application, so after you download WhatsApp, make sure to use the handy “Tell a Friend” feature to share this App with the friends and contacts in your address book.

Great news, is that the latest version of the software, released in early January, now allows you to use WhatsApp Messenger to send pictures, audio, your location and video, plus you can make a call too.

So how free, is free?

The application itself is a free download from the Nokia Ovi Store, or from WhatsApp directly. You can use WhatsApp for free for the first year and thereafter you will have to buy a yearly licence, costing you $2. As for the cost of the messages you send, the data is lumped onto your existing data costs, but just know that it costs a fraction of your current SMS costs. In short and for the non tech types among us, WhatsApp messaging is as close to free as you can get.

For those of you who send international SMS’s to mates, WhatsApp will offer you huge savings, as now it costs the same as if you were popping that message off to a mate who was a meter away and all still cheaper than a local SMS.

It almost goes without saying though, that once you start using the newly added video and audio transfer feature on WhatsApp, you will be paying for the actual cost of moving the data of that file, so be aware of that.

We definitely recommend you switch from SMS to WhatsApp to send and receive messages in your social circle.

Download WhatsApp from the Ovi Store.