What's the deal with WhatsApp?

So many people give high praise to this app as if it's the greatest thing since sliced-bread. Here's how WhatsApp is advertised on their website (www.whatsapp.com)

WhatsApp Messenger is a smartphone messaging app which allows you to exchange messages with your friends and contacts without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is cross platform and available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia (beta) and yes, those phones can all message each other! To send and receive messages, WhatsApp utilizes your existing smartphone internet data plan: 3G/EDGE (or Wi-Fi when available)

So, I don't understand what's the appeal?

1. It advertises itself as a cross-platform smartphone messaging app that utilizes your data connection so you don't have to pay for SMS. Every smartphone platform already comes built-in with such an app. It's called email.

2. Let's be honest with ourselves. WhatsApp is an instant messaging application. Every smartphone platform has apps for the main instant messaging applications already (ie, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo, etc)

3. WhatsApp uses your mobile phone number as your user-ID. An instant messaging service provider has no business knowing your mobile number. So, there's actually a privacy/security concern here.

4. WhatsApp is in trial mode for Android. So it's currently free. But it costs US$1 for the iOS and this will certainly be the same for Android soon. Why pay for an app when you already have the functionality native on your device? Who would ever pay just for an instant messaging app? There's not even a desktop client!

In response to the comments:

Using your phone number is the reall clever bit. It means you can instantly see all your friends who also use it instead of having to find out their usernames. It is only an IM app but it's useful because so many people do use it across all platforms.

Like I said, using your phone number is a privacy risk. How do we, as users, know what the guys at WhatsApp are doing with all this information? They can be selling it to telemarketers for all we know.
If WhatsApp is useful only because so many people use it across all platforms, then it will never be as useful as email. Email is used by everyone and it's supported on more platforms.

Alot, if not most of the Mobile IM clients are not always on (i.e., working in the background), you need to sign in to WLM or Yahoo! Messenger. WhatsApp is always working in the background therefore you get the message exactly when it is written. Thats a huge selling feature!!

Yes, for all IM clients, the user has to sign in. Having to sign in is not a flaw. It's an option the application allows the user. You also have the option to sign out. Also, most IM clients include the option to automatically sign in. (Strange enough, you don't have the option to sign out of WhatsApp.)
With Windows Mobile or Android, once you sign in with your IM client, you just leave it in the background. As long as you don't reboot your phone, you are always signed in. I can't say the same for iOS though. So perhaps, this application is really for iOS users because they can't multitask properly?

I still fail to see how WhatsApp is better than email, which:
- is also instant.
- has no limitation on the type of attachments.
- is a native feature to every smartphone. You don't have to pay for and use a separate application.
- doesn't even require you to "add" a person. Just begin typing the recipients name and every smartphone will autocomplete the field for you if you have that person's email in your contact list. If you don't have the person's email in your contact list, just type the address.
- is not only cross-smartphone platform; it is truly cross-platform. Email can be accessed on smartphones, dumbphones, and computers.

Update
I'm getting multiple comments with various insults over this. They're not published because they're simply not constructive. The main purpose of this article is not to say that WhatsApp is terrible. I'm just trying to say WhatsApp is redundant and I find it odd that people are paying for what's essentially an application that provides you with a functionality they already have. So if anyone has an opposing view, then please, let's discuss because I would be interested to know why exactly is this app so popular.
From the comments so far, I respect the following reasons for using WhatsApp:
- Your contacts list is not populated with email addresses.
- You like the IM-style of WhatsApp but don't like to sign in to other IM apps.

Update #2
Wow. I just realized that WhatsApp on Android is free for the first year and then $1.99 per year thereafter. There's a subscription fee and there are still people who use this? It's just appalling to me that people will pay an annual fee for instant messaging.

Update #3
Lots of comments flooding in about how Whatsapp is better than email because of the IM nature of the app. Ok, I get that. Look through the comments and I've conceded that IM is better than email when it comes to chatting.
The reason I initially use email as a point of reference is because email is native to every single smartphone. There's not a single smartphone that doesn't support push email. If you have to open up your inbox to refresh it to see if you have any new emails, then you've set up your account the wrong way. So if you want to send and receive messages or files instantly, you don't need a third party app for it.
But if IM is your cup of tea, why not stick with Google Talk or Windows Live Messenger? There are numerous reputable IM cients available for free. Why support these guys over at Whatsapp?
Also, the previous argument against using other IM apps is that they drain battery. Not anymore. Both Android and iOS support push messaging background services. In fact, Whatsapp uses the same service.

Update #4
Commentors, please stop comparing Whatsapp with SMS. Whatsapp is not SMS, is not emulating SMS, and has nothing to do with SMS.
Can it replace SMS? Sure, but so can every other IM client out there. And they're free, more secure, and more fully featured.
Is a $1.00 one-time fee or a $1.99 annual-subscription a lot of money? No, not at all. But it's all relative. Consider what you're getting before paying for it. If everyone else is offering the same (and better) product without charging for it, what's the logic in paying for an inferior alternative?
It's like if your neighbor bought an ambulance and decided to announce to everyone that he's going to offer ambulatory services. He'll charge you a few bucks and bring you to the nearest hospital. Sure, it's not a lot of money. But why not just call 911?

MiLi Power Miracle HB-B20 Review

Mili advertises this as an "External Power Bank for Digital Products". This is essentially just an external battery. You charge it and it will charge your other devices. If you tend to wander away from a power source for long periods of time, this will come in handy for charging your mobile devices.

Here are the official specs:
Capacity:2000mAh Input: 5V-0.5A(Max.)
Output: 5V-1A(Max.) Charging time:5.4 hours
Self power consumption Time: Up to 5000 hours
Product Dimension:86(L)×48(D)×17(T)mm
Package Dimension:198×110×24mm
Inner Box Dimension:400×208×120mm,15pcs
Carton Dimension:431×415×255mm,60pcs
Gross Weight:10kgs/22.05lb

Here are the Product Features as advertised by Mili:

1. External battery for iPhone*, iPod*,Mobile Phones and other digital products.
2. Small, convenient, easy to use, high capacity.
3. Use USB cable to charge MiLi Power Miracle.
4. 4 LED power indicators.

Other than the device itself, it comes packaged with the following:

• USB cable that allows you to plug different types of tips to support multiple devices.
• It includes tips to support proprietary ports from Apple, LG, Samsung, and Nokia. It also has tips to support the universal standards of MiniUSB and MicroUSB.
• Microfiber pouch.

The device itself. It's just a battery brick. It's small and light. It's about 3/4 of the size of my HTC Desire. There's a single button on the face of the device flanked by 4 LED indicators. Pressing the button will light up the LEDs to indicate how much charge is left. Each LED indicates 25% charge. On the bottom of the device, there are 2 ports. One is an output port which will accept a normal USB. The other port is for input which will accept MiniUSB. There's nothing else on the device. The rest of the device has a shiny plastic finish.

Charging the battery. In order to use the battery, it must first be charged. To do this, you need to plug a MiniUSB cable into the battery with the other end connected to a power source. If you're going to do this as intended by the manufacturer, you'll plug the MiniUSB tip into the provided USB cable. Then plug the MiniUSB end into the battery's input port while the other end goes into a PC's USB port. As noted in the specs, this can take over 5 hours to charge.
I personally use a Blackberry charger which ends in a MiniUSB tip. The other end goes directly into a wall socket. This shortens the charging time to under an hour. It would have made sense for Mili to include a wall charger.

Charging your device with the battery. Plug the USB end of the provided cable into the output port. Use the appropriate tip for your device and just plug it in. The charging process begins automatically. Simple and easy.

I've tested the battery with an iPod Touch and an HTC Desire. Works wonderfully. It seems to provide enough juice to charge each device up to 2 times. I like how the provided USB cable is coiled to keep everything neat and compact. The rate at which the battery charges my devices was quite impressive. It's on par with directly charging my devices via AC/DC. You can continue to use your mobile device while charging via the battery with no ill-effects. It will charge faster than you can discharge it through your usage.

The Good

• Easy to use.
• Support for multiple types of devices.
• Compact and light.
• The provided pouch is quite nice. Handy for preventing you from losing all those connectors.
• Inexpensive. I purchased it for HK$280 (roughly US$35)

The Bad

• Mili should have provided a wall charger. Charging through a PC's USB port is simply too slow.

More camera gear: Nikkor 35mm f/1.8

I told myself I was not going to get more camera gear. But gosh darn it, I couldn't resist.

I got myself the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens.

Reason? It's relatively inexpensive; and I wanted to shoot without flash with indoor-lighting. The use my SB-400 speedlight to bounce the flash was great. But there are times when I just don't want flash. I figured my babies would appreciate being shot without flash as well.

While it's certainly significantly better in low-light conditions compared to my 18-55mm, it's still a thousand times better when used with flash.

The sharpness with the 35mm is remarkable. I also appreciate that it's much more compact than the 18-55mm. This is definitely a lens that I should have bought a long time ago. Unless I want to shoot at a wider angle, the 18-55mm lens is going to be on the back-burner gathering dust.

Here's a test shot with the 35mm (resized 25%).

Here's the same shot with my 18-55mm set at the same focal length.

HTC Desire experience - Custom ROM

A day after rooting, I've taken another step forward in modding my Android device. I went ahead and installed a custom ROM (ie, LeeDrOiD).

I went through all this trouble with rooting and flashing my device; and for what? Just these 3 tiny reasons:

1. Battery indicator showing 1% increments - This feature should be standard on all devices. Without rooting, I would have to install a separate app to achieve similar functionality. I use to use Battery Indicator which shows the battery reading in the taskbar. But it's in addition to the default indicator; it doesn't replace it.

2. Access to paid apps in the Android Market - When I decided that I wanted access to paid apps, I didn't actually have something in mind I want to purchase. I just wanted the option to do so. The HTC Desire already has most of the apps I ever need preinstalled. For most of everything else, there are free selections readily available on the Android Market. To date, I've purchased just 3 Android apps.

Beautiful Widgets: I bought this several months ago when I was in NY and I had access to paid apps (legitimately). I use this only sometimes. I switch to this when I use alternative launchers which doesn't include HTC Sense widgets.

Documents-To-Go: Sure, it's expensive at US$9.99. But this is definitely worth it if you want to do any office document editing on-the-go. I bought this a day after I bought my phone. Thankfully, you don't need access to paid Android apps to buy it. You just download the free version off the Android Market and then pay at DataViz's site to get a registration code.

Fruit Ninja: First app I purchased after rooting and using Market Enabler. Just a silly casual game. It's cheap and fun! 

3. Ability to install all apps to microSD - I find this to be a bit overrated. I find the internal memory capacity just fine for my use. After installing all the apps I need, I find myself still with about 20-30MB free. But I see how this can become a problem for some who needs a ton of apps. Now with all my apps moved over to the microSD, I have about 90-100MB free. But I now have to seriously consider getting a larger capacity card because my 8GB card is about 70% full with all my media and apps.

Can't say anything else about the custom ROM. It's suppose to perform better but I can't really tell from day-to-day use. But performance was never really an issue on stock ROM. Apart from the above 3 items, I just need stability. As long is it doesn't crash on me, it's fine.

Finally rooted my HTC Desire

Back in my Windows Mobile days, I would be flashing new ROMs every other week or so. But ever since the switch the Android, I've not tinkered too much with my phone anymore. Mostly, it's because the device works just fine right out-of-the-box. That's not something you can say about Window Mobile devices...

Anyway, I've finally decided to root my device. It's not because I want to flash custom ROMs. It's just because I want to access the Android Market for paid apps. Currently, Hong Kong is not in the list of countries that Google has approved for paid apps. Using unrEVOked, the entire process was a breeze. It took about 10 minutes (8 of those minutes were for waiting for the downloads and reboots). There was very little user input required...

I then installed Market Enabler and voila. Done. I can now finally purchase apps from the Android Market.

This seems to be something that everyone must do. It's just too easy. It doesn't hard reset your device, so all your data is intact. There's really no reason why not to do it.

Over the next few weeks, I'll finally look into custom ROMS...

New and improved HTC Sense

1. Recent apps now appear in the notification shade. Seems a bit redundant to me when you can get to the same list by holding the Home button.

2. Maps. Offline mapping. Just brilliant.

3. HTC Sense in landscape. Meh. I think I'm in the minority for not feeling excited about this. Sure, it makes sense to have your homescreen in landscape mode if you're using a qwerty slider. But for those of us who uses a slab device, this is just meh...

4. Changes in the Mail application. I hope they changed more than just adding a "compose mail" button when viewing the inbox. currently, the HTC Mail application is not bad so, I'm eager to see what improvements they can manage.

5. Fast boot up. Videos are all over showing how the Desire Z and Desire HD boot up in just several seconds. I have my doubts on this. Seems to me that the devices are just waking from a deep stand-by state. I'd like to see the battery pulled and reseated before booting up to see if it's the real deal.

6. Changes in Camera application. The current HTC Camera application is very basic. I hope the revised version has more tools (ie, templates, stitching, continuous shots, etc).

7. Status updates in caller ID. Meh, this was available since the release of the Wildfire and was included in the official Froyo update for the HTC Desire.

8. Changes in customization. You can now rearrange entire screens which is nice.

9. HTCSense.com. This appears to be HTC's cloud-based service. Seems interesting. I hope this service will be free. Allows you to:
Remotely ring your phone.
Remotely lock and wipe your stolen/lost phone.
Backup data (contacts, call history, messages, etc)
Sharing and editing multimedia. Not sure how this is going to work.

See here for some screenshots.

Thoughts on 2010 iPods

Ah, September. Another refresh of Apple's iPod line-up. Does anyone still use one of these things? Back when it wasn't standard for phones to include a music player, I had an iPod Nano. A couple years back, I wanted to try out iOS so I got a 2nd-gen iPod Touch. Now, my Nano is used by my mom. My iPod Touch stays at home where it only gets used sparingly for games.

iPod Touch

Made for people who want to use iOS but don't want an iPhone. But there are a couple of things Apple left out which is understandable since they probably don't want it cut into their iPhone sales. It doesn't use the new industrial design of the iPhone4. It still has a curved shiny back just like the previous gen iPod Touch. While it has a rear camera capable of capture HD video, it's not a 5MP shooter like on the iPhone4. It captures stills only at 960x720. While I've shown a distaste to the iOS as a smartphone platform, I think it's perfectly fine for a digital music player.

iPod Nano

This is essentially an iPod Shuffle with a touchscreen and up to 16GB of storage. This one seems the most interesting to me. Would be great as a running device. It seems to also have Nike+ built-in. I wonder if Apple would finally decide to give up on using their proprietary dock connector. It just seems very out-of-place on such a small device. Micro or mini USB would have made much more sense.

iPod Shuffle

I never understood the Shuffle lineup. I didn't think it made sense to use a music player without a display right from the start, so there's no way one of these things was going to appeal to me. Then last year, they removed all the buttons from the device and touted it as a feature! This year, they put the buttons back. To me, seems identical to the Shuffle 2 generations ago. It's just very archaic; 2GB storage and no display? Just doesn't make much sense to choose this over the iPod Nano.

I really wonder just how far Apple is willing the push the limits on the design of the iPod Touch and the iPhone. I honestly think that they've hit a wall. I'm not talking about software here. Here are the hardware designs that Apple seems to just refuse to change about those 2 products even though it's evident that they are restricting usage behavior.

3.5" screen
Compared to competitors, this is just too small. Considering the amount of wasted space on the bezel, this is just not acceptable.

Lack of hardware buttons.
On the iPod Touch, you have buttons for standby, volume rockers, and home. The same applies to the iPhone except it also has a switch for toggling between mute and ringer. Seems like they're trying to do too much with too little buttons. You have to use the home button for everything. There's so much space on either side of the home button that it just seems odd not to put more buttons there...

Dock connector
Everyone got the memo about microUSB except Apple...

Non-removable battery
This is just not smart and I can't believe people still put up with it. I can accept a non-removable battery for my music player but definitely not for my smartphone.