Telegram? No, I am not referring to the old form of communication telegraphy. Telegram is a new (actually been in development for over a year) cloud based messaging service which pretty much does everything our beloved WhatsApp does but a lot more. It is what I use more than WhatsApp. After having been using it for over a year, I feel confident to actually publicly give a positive opinion on this instant messaging service and most importantly, I can say that it has improved so fast and has caught up to WhatsApp. In fact, we’re now at a point where it looks like WhatsApp is now playing catch up with Telegram.
So what’s all the fuss about? I guess WhatsApp does everything you need it to do. As technology consumers, when we’ve used something for a length of time, we expect improvement. I have been testing all sorts of mobile based instant messaging platforms for a long time, whether it be WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, Google Hangouts, Snapchat, etc and each one satisfying different needs. Telegram in particular stands out simply because of its simplicity, security, privacy, features, ethics and much more. Any queries of concern that I did have has been answered in its FAQs.
Telegram vs WhatsApp Side-By-Side Comparison
| Telegram | ||
| Price | Free | One-off Fee (iOS)/Annual Fee (Android) |
| Devices |
|
|
| Device Usage | Any | Only on one |
| Message Storage | Cloud Based | Phone Based |
| Desktop App | Yup | Catching Up |
| Animated GIFs | Yup | Nope |
| Animated GIF Library | Giphy | N/A |
| Chat Group Limit | 200 contacts | 100 contacts |
| API | Open | None |
| Attachment Limit | None | Compressed |
| Official Apps | Open Source – Source on GitHub | Closed |
| Unofficial Apps | Yup, encouraged | You’ll get banned |
| Stickers | Yes | Nope |
| Secure | Yes, with a hacker’s bounty | Has had man in the middle attacks |
| Self-destruct | Yup | Nope |
| Username | Yup – don’t have to give number | Nope |
| Attachment Type | Anything | Audio, Image & Video |
| Backup/Restore | Cloud – automatic | Complicated because of chat storage |
| Change Number | Keep Everything | Complicated because of Payment |
So getting to grips with Telegram isn’t so hard if you already know your way around WhatsApp. In fact, it is more fun once you’re on the bandwagon. Obviously, you can’t just go cold turkey on WhatsApp because of its popularity however you can improve your mobile instant messaging experience and eventually people will make the transition – a bit like those old BBM days.
Leave a Reply