Why do we need this?<\/p>\n
In a bizarre move, Google deleted the perfectly good SMS app from Android. Yeah. Hmm. Well, read this TechRadar piece<\/a> for some thoughts on that.<\/p>\n Sadly, Google’s corporate policy is that the consumer is always wrong: you’re not allowed to simply “use the app I already had, that worked great”. Time for a trip to the Android App Store…<\/p>\n I tried:<\/p>\n TextSecure is a perfect recreation of ” an SMS app that just works, the way its supposed to” … Apart from the lack of widget (essential!). It even has Apple iPhone style “free text messages to other users of the app”. If they’d fix that missing widget, it would be worth paying for…<\/p>\n chompSMS is very much like TextSecure, perhaps slightly prettier (personal preference). But the broken widget is just as bad as TextSecure’s, maybe worse. And it lacks the “free SMS” mode and “secure SMS” modes of TextSecure.<\/p>\n Evolve has the only working widget (essential!). But … you’ll frequently exit the app unintentionally when you hit the back button. And it’s unusable unless you like “swipe all the time to control UI instead of using the back button” behaviour.<\/p>\n The rest … are not winners. I’m using TextSecure for now. When people say “people on Android don’t buy stuff”, partly it’s because the apps are incomplete: most of these apps haven’t been fully developed (how can you have a broken widget? Why did you launch without a widget? etc).<\/p>\n NB: as a developer, I can attest that “adding a widget” is very easy. It’s stressful the first time, and then you read the docs and examples, and realise “wow! this is going to be super quick to implement!”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why do we need this? In a bizarre move, Google deleted the perfectly good SMS app from Android. Yeah. Hmm. Well, read this TechRadar piece for some thoughts on that. Sadly, Google’s corporate policy is that the consumer is always wrong: you’re not allowed to simply “use the app I already had, that worked great”. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3289"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3293,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289\/revisions\/3293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Quick review of each<\/h2>\n
TextSecure<\/h3>\n
\n
…Deal breaker<\/h4>\n
\n
Evolve SMS<\/h3>\n
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…Dealbreakers<\/h4>\n
\n
HelloSMS<\/h3>\n
\n
…Dealbreakers<\/h4>\n
\n
Go SMS Pro<\/h3>\n
\n
…Dealbreakers<\/h4>\n
\n
chompSMS<\/h3>\n
\n
…Dealbreaker<\/h4>\n
\n
Summary \/ Winners<\/h2>\n
Final thoughts<\/h2>\n