Pushbullet didn’t really have a great week last week with a bit of blowback from the introduction of their Pro tier, which removed some free features for users. The lead developer behind Pushbullet acknowledged this in an AMA on reddit yesterday and discussed a few topics of interest, including the introduction of a new feature: The ability to send SMS from your tablet.
There are limits to the Texting from your tablet though, with those users on the free tier limited to only 100 messages, be that SMS, WhatsApp, Kik, or whatever, per month. If you pay for the Pro tier however, it’s unlimited – though you have until the 1st of December until the Pro tier kicks in.
Sending texts from your Android tablet actually looks pretty simple, just have SMS Sync enabled in Pushbullet on your phone and then you can access SMS on your Android tablets app menu to start texting. The actual SMS is synced and then sent through your phone, so you will need to have network access for the SMS to be sent, and of course if you have a plan that doesn’t include unlimited texts you’ll need to pay for each one – and if you have more than one phone you can select which phone sends the SMS.
The decision to go Pro, for a number of features is still a controversial one. I for one would probably pay at $1 per month, but this idea was raised and addressed in the reddit AMA – so check that out. I don’t tend to use a lot of the features that were taken out, so it’s not a huge impact for me, but if you were affected, then we do always recommend supporting developers, and the cost is less than a cup of coffee per month.
The update with SMS support is now available in Google Play, so check to see if you’ve been given a prompt to update and make sure it’s installed there.
