Most iPhone users like my friends and I adore the WhatsApp program. It’s a great “SMS” tool because you can message your friends for free using just an internet connection (WiFi or 3G). You can even send pictures and do a group chat. It’s also efficient because it uses your mobile number as an ID and auto scans/adds your friends on the phone book who have the same app.
eBuddy XMS App, launched this week in Australia and Holland, looks like it’s going to be a great free alternative for WhatsApp. Not sure whether it’s going to be a paid app in the future at this stage.
eBuddy XMS sends real-time free SMS messages from any smartphone to any other smartphone -whether Android or iPhone. (A BlackBerry version is due out soon).
Jan-Joost “JJ” Rueb, CEO and co-founder of eBuddy said:
We are entering a category with huge potential. Our focus is to create suitable and free replacement of SMS for our users. Offering this free and un-limited messaging service ensures our users will not miss out on any personal contact with their friends and family – whether at home, school, work or play.
With eBuddy XMS, you can basically text or send a message to your friends for free (after they launch it worldwide), as long as you have an internet connection on the phone.
Installation is pretty easy and straight forward. You need to enter your mobile number and the name to appear when you chat:
It will then try to send a verification code to your phone (via SMS) to make sure that you are the owner of the number. Once completed, eBuddy XMS can scan your address book to automatically find friends who are already using the same app so you can start messaging each other. It can also scan your Facebook friends and add them to its Contacts list.
Like the WhatsApp application, it has a few notification icons (whether the message has already been read by the other party, and so on):
Messaging and push notification alert:
The eBuddy XMS has the emoticons enabled (even if you haven’t installed an Emoji app to enable it on your iPhone) so you can do fun stuffs right away to other iPhone users.
The app seems pretty stable so far and definitely a worthy one to challenge WhatsApp. I like how it uses your mobile number as an ID instead of having to tell your friends your username. The interface is quite smooth too.
At this stage, it has not beaten WhatsApp features though (Group Chat, sending photos, using Contact picture from the phone’s address book, etc) but WhatsApp is known for its flakiness and slow performance at times. If eBuddy can improve this app even further while maintaining a good performance, I’m sure many will jump ship into using eBuddy XMS in the future. Let’s hope for the best!
eBuddy XMS at iTunes Store: http://tinyurl.com/4sezrrm
Android Market: http://tinyurl.com/4gay4av
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