On Dec. 3, 1992, a 22-year-old engineer in England named Neil Papworth sent the world’s first text message, reading “Merry Christmas,” from his computer to his friend’s phone. Yesterday, on the 20th anniversary of texting, more than 20 billion texts were sent from phones worldwide.
What was designed as a simple way for interoffice contact has developed into the world’s most preferred form of communication, with a whopping 92 percent of smartphone users favoring texts over email and social networking messaging services.
Despite texting’s wide use, or perhaps because of it, cellular service providers continue to outrageously overcharge for their texting service plans. An average text message consists of around 140 bytes of data yet costs an average of 20 cents to send. This leads to a cost of nearly $1,500 per MB of data sent, making it more costly to send a text than to receive the same amount of data from the Hubble Telescope, which is in orbit over 350 miles above the Earth’s surface.
But since the advent of smartphones and data plans, there have been free texting applications that can be used as a much cheaper alternative. Here are three applications that I recommend you use in lieu of a texting plan:
1) textPlus: This texting app is available for almost all smartphones, including those that use Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating system. It provides you with a free telephone number which you can make calls from as well as send and receive texts. It also supports group and photo messaging and can work off your data plan or Wi-Fi.
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2) imo: This app is more than just a texting app, allowing you to link your other social messaging accounts including GTalk, Facebook and Skype. You can message your contacts from these services from your phone as well as send photos, videos and voice messages.
3) WeChat: As well as being a free texting app, WeChat has a unique “shake” feature that allows you to share photos, contact info and other multimedia files with users near you. It also has a “look around” feature that sees how close other users of the app are to you.
It is amazing how cellphone carriers can continue to raise the price for providing a service running on 20-year-old technology. Luckily for us, mobile phone app developers have our back with these free alternatives.
Brian is a junior in Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected].
