BlackBerry App Review: Kik Chat
While unlimited text messaging plans are pretty commonplace these days, there are still users out there who don’t want to cough up the cash to send out SMS messages. There are several solutions for theses users, including mobile IM services such as AIM and Google Talk, SMS sent through Google Voice, BlackBerry Messenger which of course only works for BlackBerry users, etc. All of these are well and good but they all have their own drawbacks, so I’m here to offer one more solution to the pool.
The Service
Kik is an application that sets out to repair the broken relationship between iPhone and BlackBerry users by offering an application to send messages in a BBM-like fashion. Kik doesn’t stop there though, the application also allows you to send messages to any phone with SMS capabilities with the first 50 messages being completely free. After the initial 50, additional messages cost just $0.009, less than a penny. Perhaps the nicest thing about texting non-Kik users is that you receive a local number so that your friends won’t have to suffer any international texting fees. Kik is also instant, with push notifications immediately informing you that a new message has arrived. Users can also choose to be informed with a vibration or sound alert, but Kik does not incorporate into the native profile settings so notification options are fairly limited.
The Application
Recently Kik updated from version 0.9 to 0.920555 and while the new version doesn’t seem to imply much of a feature update, the application has actually received a few nice features that the previous version didn’t have. The most notable addition is the inclusion of the autocorrection that we all know and love on the BlackBerry. While Kik was certainly usable before this update, I can’t say it was particularly pleasurable to manually insert capital letters and punctuation. The new version brought a new application icon as well, which in my opinion, looks better than the previous rendition.
Setup
Logging in and using the application for the first time is quite simple—requiring users to simply set a display name and include the phone number of the device they are using. Kik will then send a SMS message to your phone with a verification code. After entering the code into Kik you’re good to go. You can now text anyone you want, and with the native BlackBerry address book integrated into the app it’s easy to pull up your existing contacts and also create new ones within Kik. If one of your contacts is a Kik user then your SMS credit pool won’t be affected, for non-Kik users, each message will use a credit.
Pros
-Instant SMS messaging without the cost
-The BlackBerry application is free
-Nice, threaded layout
-Free to other Kik users, less than a penny to non-Kik users
Cons
-Kik applications only available for BlackBerry and iPhone
-Notification options are slightly limited
For more information, check out Kik.
Print article | This entry was posted by GuruJustin on May 13, 2024 at 3:00 pm, and is filed under App Reviews, Blackberry, Editorials. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
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