I was shocked to read a tech news article recently calling WhatsApp the "granddaddy" of messaging: I think ICQ would beg to differ. But among messaging apps intended to save users SMS texting costs, it certainly boasts a huge user base: In fact, WhatsApp peaked at one point as the 6th most popular paid app on the iTunes store, and Onavo ranks it as the eighth most popular social app. So there's a good chance that your iPhone-toting pals will be reachable—even more so now that it's free to install. In fact, the WhatsApp's CEO claimed that it had more users than Twitter—over a quarter billion. But is all this popularity warranted? I have to admit that I'm at a loss to explain it.
One of the few benefits of WhatsApp is that you can use it to converse with your Android, Blackberry, and iPhone-using friends as well as with other Windows Phone users. That's a big advantage over the excellent yet insular iMessage iPhone app, though it's not unique among today's messaging apps. An advantage iMessage boasts, however, is that it offers a desktop client—Mac-only, of course—that lets you text iPhone users from your computer.
Setup and Signup
WhatsApp is free to install but there's a 99 cent a year subscription after the first year. I didn't see any indication of this subscription fee on the Windows Phone app store, but when I contacted WhatsApp to clear this up, they told me that the policy of one year free and 99 cents a year after that holds true for all platforms. So, apparently, after a year of using the app, it's pay up or go home.
To get started with WhatsApp, you'll need to enter your phone number, so if you have a device without cell service, you won't be able to use the app, even though it mostly uses Wi-Fi and cellular data to function. I installed and tested the app on a Samsung ATIV Odyssey. After you enter my number, WhatsApp sent my phone a text message. Happily, I just had to tap on the link in the SMS message to enter it into the app. After this, I was prompted to enter my name and choose a user picture. All my phone contacts were added, and for each of these, you can invite to use the app with an automatically generated email.
A differentiator of WhatsApp from messaging apps like Kik is that your actual phone number is your user id, rather than a username or PIN that you choose. But this approach has the side effect of limiting you to a single device and phone number. Another concern is that you're giving your mobile number to a small company that may at some point decide that a list of mobile numbers makes a good source of revenue if sold to marketers.
Connecting with my contacts proved more troublesome than for most communication services: I couldn't just search for them way you can in Skype: The Search icon on each WhatsApp page only searched within the contacts already listed on the current page, not worldwide users. And even for a contact who I knew to be on WhatsApp, and whose phone number I had in my phone contacts, the app suggested I send an email invitation to get the app, which struck me as ridiculous as well as frustrating. A simple "connect to Facebook friends" would have been more than welcome.
Interface
The app has only three swipe-by sections: Favorites, All, and Chats. WhatsApp automatically adds your Windows Phone Favorites, though I'd prefer to keep them as separate WhatsApp favorites. For a service designed to overthrow SMS, that approach may make some sense. But I'm not sure why non-WhatsApp contacts were in the All section when I couldn't message them within WhatsApp.
Out on the phone's start screen, the app's live tile showed how many messages I had waiting, and banner notifications across the top of the screen let you know when any new messages come in, displaying with the first line.
Texting
WhatsApp's texting interface is clear and pleasant enough, but I couldn't change the look or wallpaper. When you send a message, it shows up with a single check mark to show that it's been sent, and then when the contact actually reads the message, this mark turns into a double check symbol. You can include the usual selection of smilies and emoji in your chats, and the message page shows you when the other person is typing—but at the top, not in the message area, which would be clearer. WhatsApp's Group feature lets you do all this same stuff, but with multiple conversants.
That's all well and good, but frankly, all of it either is par for the course or falls short of what you get in other messaging apps: Kik does a better job of indicating message status, and Facebook Messenger offers stickers that are far more fun than the standard emoticons found in WhatsApp and the rest. One thing I was really surprised that I couldn't do in WhatsApp for Windows Phone was to delete a conversation—even most phones' built-in SMS clients can do this.
Okay, now, finally, for something WhatsApp does well: it lets you record audio and video clips to include in your conversations! Kik does let you include a photo or video you shoot on the phone, but not audio alone (for that, take a look at Voxer). WhatsApp also lets you send your location, along with a small map—a nice touch not found in most competitors (though it is available in the stock Windows Phone messaging app).
And then there's the matter of stability. At one point, after leaving my Windows Phone for a while, WhatsApp displayed the word "Resuming" with the Windows Phone activity dots dancing across the screen. This continued till I restarted the phone.
What's Up with WhatsApp?
As far as I can tell, the only reason to use WhatsApp as opposed to Kik, Line, Skype, or Viber, is that people you know or meet use it. True, setup is a snap, but in terms of features, it's as unspecial as it gets. Add to this that you have to give a small company your cell phone number, and can't easily find other users, and may run into stability issues…you get the idea. Give it a pass, unless, again, it's the only thing used by your acquaintances.
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