We have always adored Blackberry Messenger, the trademark of RIM for many years now. Blackberry users have been enjoying this service to be in touch with their friends, relatives, colleague, etc without spending money on sms’s or using IM’s like Gtalk. However now, courtesy WhatsApp all the smart-phone users including Android, Symbian, Blackberry and iPhone can enjoy a service identical to Blackberry Messenger (BBM as they say) on their mobile phones and that too at almost no cost!
WhatsApp Messenger, a cross-platform mobile messaging app, is a BBM type service that lets you interact with your contacts for free. It allows you to send text messages, video files, audio files, image’s at no cost. The only prerequisite being the person with whom you want to interact should have WhatsApp installed. I have been using WhatsApp on my Nokia 5230 for some time now and here’s what i think of it:
WhatsApp Review
The installation size of WhatsApp is 3MB and it quietly resides on the phone memory running 24×7 in background. When you install it, first a registration form needs to be submitted with your mobile phone number (make sure it’s correct) and then a sms is sent from your own mobile number to the number your registered with to verify the number. Once the verification is done, WhatsApp searches for the other WhatsApp users in your phonebook automatically and shows them under the head “Favorites” on the home-screen, this process is repeated each time any entry in your phonebook is modified/added/deleted hence all the Favorites are kept up-to-date. Moreover, all those who are not using WhatsApp are neatly shown under the head “Contacts” from where you can send them a download link of WhatsApp and invite them via sms/email.
The user interface is clean and simple, no extra tabs to deal with. The home-screen has 4 tabs shows in Grid form viz.
- Chats – Shows all the ongoing conversations with different contacts.
- Favorites – All the contacts in your phonebook using WhatsApp.
- Contacts – Shows all the entries in your mobile phone’s phone book.
- Status – Allows you to set your current status, similar to IM’s.
To start a conversation all you need to do is click/tap on the contact, type the message and send it. No fuss at all, just the way it should be. As far setting up WhatsApp is concerned, it does have lot many options to configure, you can choose the memory (phone or external) to save media; Way of alerting you when a new message arrives (Tone, Vibration, Light or pre-assigned contact’s ringtone); Turn off when on roaming (saves data costs).
One of the best feature of WhatsApp is the sharing your current Geo location. A small map appears on the chat screen clicking which opens up the default map application in your phone using which you can easily track the person or get direction to! All in all I have really enjoyed using WhatsApp on my symbian phone barring the following issues:
- Conversing with 3-4 contacts without deleting the chat history makes WhatsApp is bit slow to respond.
- Absence of option to select preferred mode of Internet connection. It automatically picks up the working connection or tries all the available connections till one of them works. And there are times when it messes up with Internet connectivity due to the same reason.
- I am a little skeptical about storage of media files which are shared over WhatsApp. Are those stores on their servers? Are they safe? They should mention the same in their FAQ maybe.
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Minimal Data usage (for 3 months) There’s no way to tun it off completely. It continues to run in background no matter what you do.
I must say it has a great future ahead of it for the simple reason that it is not restricted to just a single OS. It’s cross OS usability works in its favour. An iphone user can interact with a symbian, blackberry or android user without worrying about using a different app for each one of them.
WhatsApp is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Symbian (S60v3, S60v5, Symbian^3) mobile phones. You can download the latest version directly from their website. WhatsApp costs roughly 1.99$ (for Symbian users) but can be used for free for 1 year.
is whatsapp not for samsung crby2..?
n if it is den hw can i get it
No. It’s available only for S60, Android and iOS
yes u can nakul. I m using it in my x2.00
hi
am using nokia x2-01, can i use whats app on my mobile.
There’s only 1 way to know that. If a person is in your phonebook, has whatsapp installed and is not shown in whatsapp contact list then possibly he/she has blocked you!
Hi just want to know how do you know when someone blocked you from whatsapp?!!
Download a memory hog to get rid of another memory hog? I don’t think it is a good idea. Moreover, Whatsapp should have given the user ability to turn off the app.
Thank you. I ended up giving up and changed phones…
download netquin mobile guard and antivirus on your symbian, you should be able to turn off whatsapp at startup.
Hi, i would just like to ask how do i get WhatsApp to stop automatically connecting on my nokia e52? Its constantly connecting by itself, even if the app closed? As WhatsApp and Opera Mini are the only apps i have installed. Would appreciate any and all assistance.
It would be better to put forth this question to whatsapp developers. I have a very limited knowledge of how whatsapp works in baclground.
As far as killing the whatsapp task is concerned, well you don’t actually stop the app. The related thread still runs in background.
I see that there is an option to email whatsapp chat conversation in Android as well as in iphone version. Why not in Symbian.
I am pretty sure that the chat conversations are not stored in servers: because I can load previous chats even without a sim (with no internet conn). Read through the FAQ as well.
I have Nokia X6. I could not find any other file other than WAlog files in my phone (which does not have any chat conversation.) I suspect that it is written in “.py script”. However, could not find any “.py file”. My mobile gets really slow while using Whatsapp with a chat history for more than 5 months. You see how desperate I am in need to backup a few conversations.
Why isn’t there an option to backup chat history in Symbian version ?? Paritosh, I hope you could bring up a tweak to this problem I am facing. Thanks.
However, I could kill the WhatsApp task through Netqin Task Manager (Handy TaskMan doesn’t seem to work). Eats up a lot of memory when it runs all the time.
Yes indeed. Unfortunately Whatsapp developers aren’t active when it comes to bug fixes and improvements in symbian app.
This is a wonderful app and would be better if more people started using it.
At last, the free one of the Blackberry application hahahaha…No offence 😛