For my first post I am recommending my most used iPhone application – WhatsApp. Whats that? No, WhatsApp!, a smartphone to smartphone internet messaging and chat application. What does this mean? Well, apart from the one off payment for buying the application you won’t have to pay for any more SMS or MMS to another device with WhatsApp installed.

The application is very clean and easy to use. By default it will find all the contacts in your address book who have WhatsApp and add them to your favourites list. It keeps track of all previous chats and indicates when a message you have sent has been received by the server and read by the recipient.

A double green tick indicates your message has been received.

WhatsApp identifies users by their mobile numbers, so you must have your friend’s numbers in your address book for it to find them. For those worried about privacy and not wanting to give people their mobile number another application that works on usernames might be more suitable (for example Ping!).

Favorites List also shows status which can be linked to Facebook

Apart from sending plain text, WhatsApp is also capable of sending photos, videos (provided you are using a 3GS iPhone), audio notes, contacts and even share your location. You can also link your status to Facebook.

WhatsApp is able to send lots of media types

This application also makes for a decent IM client. You can see when your friend is online, typing to you, and also when they were last online. Unlike full IM clients you cannot send files, apart from those previously mentioned. If you have Emoji icons enabled you can also insert emoticons in your messages.

At the time of writing WhatsApp is up to version 2.5.1 and compared to other messaging apps (such as Ping! and TextPlus) I have found WhatsApp to be the most reliable and polished iPhone messaging application. The only thing I dislike about it is the name, and that I can get over because it’s such a fantastic app.

So what are you waiting for? If you and your friends use iPhones and BlackBerrys hit up this link and check out WhatsApp now.

WhatsApp currently only costs $1.19 AUD in the iPhone App Store and $2.99 US in the Blackberry App Store.

Note: I have only used the iPhone version of WhatsApp. Blackberry features may differ.

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