GoKawiilRobert Triggs / Android Authority
WhatsApp gets the most love globally with around three billion monthly users, while Viber is number 7 on this list with over 200 million monthly users. These are my two most-used messaging apps, but I’m not a fan of either of them.
I’ve always felt that there’s real beauty in simplicity, but apps like WhatsApp and Viber wholeheartedly disagree with me on this one. And they are not alone. Most of the messaging apps I’ve tried over the years are trying too hard, adding feature after feature, all in hopes of differentiating themselves from the competition. I get the logic, I just have a genuine distaste for it.
There is one messaging app that does it right, though. Unlike its rivals, Signal is focused on what truly matters, but it has a major problem — no one seems to be using it.
What is your main messaging app? 7 votes WhatsApp 29 % Viber 0 % Facebook Messenger 0 % Signal 57 % Telegram 14 % Something else (let me know in the comments) 0 %
Slow down, buddy
Mitja Rutnik / Android Authority
Call me crazy, but I think a messaging app should be mainly focused on, well, messaging. And calls, of course — both audio and video. I’ll add security to the mix, but that’s where things should end. Not for Viber, though.
There’s an Explore tab filled with the latest news and riddled with ads. A sticker market where I can download stickers to use in chats, some of which I have to pay for. Then there’s Viber Out for calling landlines, which I’ve never used, and Viber Pay that I couldn’t care less about and never really researched properly. I mean, all I want to do is send a message to my partner asking what time dinner will be ready, but when I open the app, there are five tabs in the navigation bar that are nothing more than a distraction, and the one I actually use (Chats) is filled with messages from random people about the latest crypto scheme.
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