Viber: Free Calls and Messaging — Review

A free app that allows you unlimited messages and calls through your data connection can be a bit of a trap for new players. But for those of us that have either a high data plan, or understand that VoIP connections can chew through a lot of data are in the box seat to use Viber to its full potential and save ourselves some money!

Viber is the best app I have trialled that does either free messaging, calls or both. The messaging interface is similar to the iPhone messaging app, which is really user-friendly and easy to understand.

Pros..

• Unlimited Messages to your friends who use Viber
• No need to search for your friends, their mobile number is their ID
• Sound quality for voice calls is excellent, even on 3G
• Contacts menu can be filtered to show only your contacts who are on Viber

Cons..

• Lacking some customisation options such as notifications
• Too many menus can make it a little confusing to users
• No group chat option is available at this time

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Battery..

Much like other similar apps, I have not noticed any obvious degradation in battery life. I have heard reports of the VoIP calls killing batteries very quickly though. Probably worth watching if you do start to use the free calls option a lot though.

Conclusion..

Having used it for a couple of weeks now I have found that although it’s cross-platform for compatibility between iOS and Android devices and I have found that the messaging interface of Viber is cleaner than the Skype Android app. It’s not as universal in the fact that you can’t chat to someone who is sitting in front of a PC or mac somewhere around the world but Viber is still quite a user-friendly app with massive potential to save a large number of users money. If you’ve got access to Wi-Fi for the majority of your day the potential savings grow very quickly. Some refining of options and customisation of the app such as notification sounds is certainly needed.

It’s got over 14,000 5 star reviews and an average of 4.2 stars (at the time this review was written) on the market so it’s clearly a popular choice with a large number of users. If you’ve got a lot of friends on smartphones that you message a lot, it’s probably worth trialing this with them.