Texting app that works directly with other non-iphones?

[chuckflip53]

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I'm searching for a texting app that is able to send SMS messages directly to other phones but so far the only apps that do this require the other user to have said app installed as well...
is there an app that exists currently that would let me send txts using my current phone number to any other cell phone as if the app were my default SMS client? (my main motivation for this is to reduce my texting costs as my data plan is already a hefty monthly sum)

 

[WeetaBiXie]

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I'm searching for a texting app that is able to send SMS messages directly to other phones but so far the only apps that do this require the other user to have said app installed as well...
is there an app that exists currently that would let me send txts using my current phone number to any other cell phone as if the app were my default SMS client? (my main motivation for this is to reduce my texting costs as my data plan is already a hefty monthly sum)

Heywire used to do it and I think its still free for the US and some of its territories. It used to work for a many countries before...

 

[chuckflip53]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'll give it a try - thank you for that!

edit: unfortunately the app assigns me a random number to use :/

 

[takeshi74]

I'm searching for a texting app that is able to send SMS messages directly to other phones but so far the only apps that do this require the other user to have said app installed as well...

Those are not SMS apps then. An SMS app will send SMS via your carrier's network directly to any other mobile phone.

What you're describing are IM apps and they generally use data, not SMS.

 

[pbkiller]

Have you tried TextNow? They even give you a phone number to text. A friend of mine uses it and it works like a charm. She sends me texts from TextNow and I receive them in my SMS iPhone app and when i reply, she gets 'em in the TextNow app (so it should work the same way for you). Hope it helps...

 

[Obscurelight]

I used to use textfree and that worked just fine. even gave you a phone number for the other party to text back

 

[Thedeathbear]

I've only seen ones that assign you a number. Google voice does and it is free. If you jailbreak, you can even make their SMS go to your regular messaging app. Unfortunately, it doesn't do MMS.

 

[vettori]

Such an app should 'interact' with your mobile carrier servers to redirect the SMS they receive for your 'regular' phone number to the app's backend servers.

I think that no carrier would allow this unless they're part of the business.