Check out WhatsApp for iPhone

jkb · Aug 11, 2009

Hey guys (and girls),

Check out our app, WhatsApp: http://www.whatsapp.com

WhatsApp is an iPhone messenger which works between iPhone users with a chat server back-end. If two people are online at the same time, you can even see when the other party is typing a reply back:

WhatsApp integrates with your Address Book and there is no PINs or Username to remember. This is as pure of SMS replacement as you can get (hey, SMS works without PINs and Usernames also, right?).

vega07 · Aug 11, 2009

I love the concept. Nice looking app, great icon, works well.

But the only problem is that most of my contacts don't have Blackberries or iPhones.

I can see this application growing on all platforms, however. And how are you guys offering this app for free??

jkb · Aug 12, 2009

vega07 said:
I love the concept. Nice looking app, great icon, works well.

But the only problem is that most of my contacts don't have Blackberries or iPhones.

what smartphone platforms do most of your friends have? we know that Symbian is really popular in europe, but in USA, iPhone and BlackBerry own something like 80% of the smartphone market.

we are in the process of developing the app for other smartphones, but PalmPre and Android smartphone marketshare is so small, it hasn't been a high priority for us yet.

vega07 said:
I can see this application growing on all platforms, however. And how are you guys offering this app for free??

we are a bunch of hippies who don't believe in money. LOL, just kidding.

to be honest our biggest issue right now is not money but growing the user base (since app only works when others use it). i can say with 99% certainty that app will always stay free.

TwoBytes · Sep 18, 2009

this is AMAZING! it just WORKS like the whole apple vibe... put my number in and bam, free SMS's with all my iphone buddies.

push and badges are great! Some hiccups where i am not getting push or badges all the time, but i hope these will be ironed out? This is only the first release, right?

i'm saving money and this is the first app i put on my first page for a loooong while

jkb · Sep 18, 2009

musio said:
this is AMAZING! it just WORKS like the whole apple vibe... put my number in and bam, free SMS's with all my iphone buddies.

push and badges are great! Some hiccups where i am not getting push or badges all the time, but i hope these will be ironed out? This is only the first release, right?

i'm saving money and this is the first app i put on my first page for a loooong while

if you are on Wi-Fi, push notifications might not be in real time. here is an official statement from an apple engineer:

"Are you using wifi? If so, there's some limitations:

-Wifi needs to be tethered or screen on to keep a constant connection to APNS
-Otherwise, the device will sleep and briefly wake up once every thirty minutes to check for stored messages (which can be overwritten, as we only keep the last one, per app)."

TwoBytes · Sep 19, 2009

Reply from a dev = 5* review

thanks for the info!

nanohits · Sep 19, 2009

Does this app need to be running if I receive a chat?

ctt1wbw · Sep 19, 2009

No, it doesn't log you out. It will give you a push notification where you can open the app.

drill423 · Sep 19, 2009

Gotta say I love this app. Sent it out to a few of my friends with iphones and they are loving it too! One suggestion I had is somewhat similar to the sms messages the iphone does, and that's making your comments and the response of others into different colors. It makes it easier to read. It's not a huge thing in the long run. Lovin' this though! Great job.

nanohits · Sep 19, 2009

Yeah same here. Its a really nice app and will be using this now to communicate with my brother and sisters overseas.

sniffies · Sep 19, 2009

Please, consider the following UI tweaks:

- In Favorites, clicking contact's name should take you straight to the chat instead of revealing the Call, Chat, Email and Cancel buttons. All of these are already accessible from the top of every chat window. Also, I never understood the need for Favorites menu. Kinda redundant (JMO).
- Why not move the Status button into Settings? If not, then why not make the Status button actually show the status by using miscellaneous signs à la Skype.app?
- Give us ability to customize the bottom toolbar.

All about Settings:
- Firstly, it's kinda disorderly. Having OCD, I'd drag the Help, About and Tell a Friend menus all the way to the button as they are not the first thing one would look for under settings.
- Why have settings inside settings inside settings? Bring everything out of the Chat Settings menu and consolidate it with the main settings.
- Connect with Facebook does not have to be a button. It kinda stands out too much and unnecessarily at that. It could simply become another menu with an arrow. Give it a uniform and consistent look. No ugly blue buttons amongst white arrow menus!

- Big one: give your app a better name! I'm sure, you liked the What's Up and WhatsApp word association, but it sounds kinda amateurish and silly. Be the first one to use something like iPhone Messenger (à la BlackBerry Messenger

)

Keep up the good work and best of luck!

nanohits · Sep 19, 2009

PBF,

I pretty much agree with everything you have said and you are right, the name kind of sounds dumb. A bit more polish and this app can even start charging considering how much money people will save in SMSing

jkb · Sep 19, 2009

drill423 said:
Gotta say I love this app. Sent it out to a few of my friends with iphones and they are loving it too! One suggestion I had is somewhat similar to the sms messages the iphone does, and that's making your comments and the response of others into different colors. It makes it easier to read. It's not a huge thing in the long run. Lovin' this though! Great job.

they are different colors, just not drastically different. we will change the coloring though in future releases.

jkb · Sep 19, 2009

PBF said:
Please, consider the following UI tweaks:

- In Favorites, clicking contact's name should take you straight to the chat instead of revealing the Call, Chat, Email and Cancel buttons. All of these are already accessible from the top of every chat window. Also, I never understood the need for Favorites menu. Kinda redundant (JMO).

we wanted to make favorites to give people a familiar look to Phone.app

also another reason why we can't simply make a tap on Favorites go into Chat is because you can put into favorites contacts who don't have the app.

PBF said:
- Why not move the Status button into Settings? If not, then why not make the Status button actually show the status by using miscellaneous signs à la Skype.app?

unlike skype, we don't really have an "online" or "offline" or "invisible" modes -- our status is just a string of text.

PBF said:
- Give us ability to customize the bottom toolbar.

can't easily be done. tab bar would need to have 6 items or more and the last item would be "more" (take a look at iPod app to see what i mean)

PBF said:
All about Settings:
- Firstly, it's kinda disorderly. Having OCD, I'd drag the Help, About and Tell a Friend menus all the way to the button as they are not the first thing one would look for under settings.
- Why have settings inside settings inside settings? Bring everything out of the Chat Settings menu and consolidate it with the main settings.
- Connect with Facebook does not have to be a button. It kinda stands out too much and unnecessarily at that. It could simply become another menu with an arrow. Give it a uniform and consistent look. No ugly blue buttons amongst white arrow menus!

when we use FBConnect API, we have to go by their rules and one those rules is that we have to use that artwork.

as for settings inside of settings, you are probably right, we will be changing settings more as add more features.

PBF said:
- Big one: give your app a better name! I'm sure, you liked the What's Up and WhatsApp word association, but it sounds kinda amateurish and silly. Be the first one to use something like iPhone Messenger (à la BlackBerry Messenger )

why would we call this an iPhone messenger if we plan to add chat into our BlackBerry app and also try to develop this for other smart phone platforms?

PBF said:
Keep up the good work and best of luck!

thanks

jkb · Sep 19, 2009

nanohits said:
PBF,

I pretty much agree with everything you have said and you are right, the name kind of sounds dumb. A bit more polish and this app can even start charging considering how much money people will save in SMSing

we are looking at this and next few releases as an early beta. once we get all the bugs out, will most likely start charging.

ctt1wbw · Sep 20, 2009

So get it while it's free, boys! I already have gotten numerous people using this app. I'd like to see Apple buy this and include it as a standard app, much the same way that Flurry is now a standard screen saver.

TwoBytes · Sep 20, 2009

jkb said:
we are looking at this and next few releases as an early beta. once we get all the bugs out, will most likely start charging.

I hope you mean charge for the app and not any subscriptions

One bug - writing txt in chat mode you get one long line instead of the chat wrapping around the bubble like the native iphone sms. Can it wrap around? (eg, it's hard to delete words,etc)

Another issue - can you include teh feature to delete individual messages?

nanohits · Sep 20, 2009

The other thing I have noticed is not all messages get delivered. And not all messages get notification when the app is off. With an SMS the notification is always there when you get the phone off sleep. With this app its a hit and miss. So hopefully this will be improved in future where it delivers it 100% of the time. This probably has to do with the push notification.

jkb · Sep 20, 2009

nanohits said:
The other thing I have noticed is not all messages get delivered. And not all messages get notification when the app is off. With an SMS the notification is always there when you get the phone off sleep. With this app its a hit and miss. So hopefully this will be improved in future where it delivers it 100% of the time. This probably has to do with the push notification.

we will be adding message acknowledgments to avoid dropped messages. usually dropped messages are caused by people using very weak wi-fi/gprs connections.

as for push notifications:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8506140/

kas23 · Sep 21, 2009

jkb said:
as for push notifications:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8506140/

This seems like a very strange (and potentially fatal) limitation. I usually keep my WiFi on all the time. Depending on where I am, it'll jump back-and-forth from 3G to WiFi. So, basically, this app is unusable for me if I'm on WiFi then? If I have WiFi switched on and don't have my screen on, I won't get any pushes? And there any work-around for this?

TwoBytes · Sep 21, 2009

musio said:
I hope you mean charge for the app and not any subscriptions

One bug - writing txt in chat mode you get one long line instead of the chat wrapping around the bubble like the native iphone sms. Can it wrap around? (eg, it's hard to delete words,etc)

Another issue - can you include teh feature to delete individual messages?

Second thoughts - i like the way you can still read the previous messages unlike the iphone sms app but i still think there should be some sort of wrapping system...

and deleteing individual messages

ViPa · Sep 21, 2009

when is the update with group messaging coming out?

Drex1x · Sep 22, 2009

Wow love this app, very useful, entertaining

I simply got to say that this is by far one of the best iPhone apps I've ever used. If some of the settings that the native texting app has would be included that be a big plus, I.E wrap around text, landscape ( comming soon ? ) single message deletion, maybe group IM ( don't know exactly how that would work ) etc. Also if you could add people with out exiting the program that would be helpful too (hope I didn't miss that). In addition, if you could incoporate facebook pictures to be placed next to the persons name. I've also seen that some people have suggested to change the name of this app, this would probably be more beneficial as it would seem more professional. You guys most certainly have the right idea and should definately invest on this app because in the long run it would most likely be a very good outcome ( this app is gonna be big! I see alot of people using it ). Overall you guys are going in the right direction!

jkb · Sep 22, 2009

kas23 said:
This seems like a very strange (and potentially fatal) limitation. I usually keep my WiFi on all the time. Depending on where I am, it'll jump back-and-forth from 3G to WiFi. So, basically, this app is unusable for me if I'm on WiFi then? If I have WiFi switched on and don't have my screen on, I won't get any pushes? And there any work-around for this?

i am just conveying what apple engineer posted on devforum. i am not yet sure what a good solution to this is. sorry.

jkb · Sep 22, 2009

ViPa said:
when is the update with group messaging coming out?

not any time soon. with the huge success that the app had, last week has been pretty much spent on bug fixes and server maintenance.

will get to it though...

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