About half a month ago, I expressed my disappointment at the non-existence of a WhatsApp client for computers. Bless my lucky stars — another competing app has done just that! Viber is an Instant Messaging app available for all major smartphone platforms released in late 2010; around a year after WhatsApp’s launch. Its way of working is the same — Viber uses your phone number to log in and automatically adds all contacts who use this app to your favourites. But it goes a step ahead of WhatsApp, by enabling not just text-based conversations but voice calls over the Internet too.
Viber has released apps for Windows and Mac, thereby bringing their instant messaging service to over 90 percent of people using computers today. Post install, if you’re using Viber on a mobile phone, you can enter that same number to log in. After verifying your identity, the desktop app keeps conversations and contacts between your phone and computer in sync — Brilliant! No need to keep switching between the two when you have them side-by-side. It is awesome to be able to pick up a conversation on one device, after you’ve left it on the other.
You can do all the usual stuff with the desktop app like chat with another Viber user or a group of Viber users (yeah, no more need to take the extra effort of unlocking the phone, only to cringe every time somebody copy-pastes a stupid joke in a group). Voice and video calling is there as well. Also, a cool feature worth mentioning is the ability to transferring a Viber call between your phone and computer.
Now to report on some bad news — the desktop app quite primitive at the moment and doesn’t support any emoticons, which X-( and we hope that it is implemented soon. Now I shall begin my journey of convincing all frequently contacted people (and groups. Ok, mostly groups) to switch to Viber. I think this isn’t going to be that easy…
VoIP has been there for ages, what exactly do we get different from this App ? What is the binding factor ?
_cesc.
This app is no different than the way Gtalk works on phone and computer, or the way Skype works. The only advantage is the automatic adding of friends who install Viber who’re in your phonebook, just like how WhatsApp works. And there’s no login-logout.