WeChat Social Messaging App Detailed Review with Screen Shots

When WeChat social app hit the Android market , no one knew the power of synchronising networks offering free cross platform in just one app. What WeChat offers is the experience of sharing in a whole new way mimicking the famous social networks in a totally convincing environment with free cross-platform individual and group messaging with text, voice notes, images, videos, location data, and more.

When Blogadda, a social platform for bloggers offered me a chance for an unbiased review giving valuable feedback and suggestion for WeChat social media app, I was more glad to download the app to my android HTC Mobile Phone and logging into it using my Face Book account.What followed next is a pool of unexpected adventures , scrutinizing every feature of the app.

Note : You can also sign up using WeChat ID or register the same via your phone number.

Developed  by Tencent , the largest Internet company in APAC , We Chat is the only Social Messaging App to offer Video/Audio calling and voice messaging with about 200 million users worldwide. It is a free mobile communication and social networking app for Smart phones with features like Video/Audio Calling, Push-to-Talk Voice Messaging, Group Chat-text & voice (up to 40 people) and Location based friend-discovery social features.

Different ways to add friends

One way of adding friends is by using Social -> Add contacts in WeChat app.

Adding Contacts

No more options asking you add friends and filling in their details .You can easily add your friends from your Phone contacts, Face Book lists and even find new ones using two innovative ways.

Apart from the known methods of adding friends through Mobile contacts, the other features include

Face Book Integration:
There is no social pages/app in the Internet pool without FB. This app also contains a Face book integration button which can be used to connect with our Face Book friends .

Add by ID :
Using this method you can connect with other Wechat member using their profile ID or phone number


Scan QR code :
This is a two-dimensional matrix Barcode  readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and other smart phones. Your profile is offered a unique QR codes which can be used to track your WeChat ID. Also, when used externally in website and blog, your readers/friends can just scan the QR code using a bar scanner and then connect with you.

WeChat Innovative ways to Attract New Friends
Ever imagined new and innovative ways to find and connect to new and old friends.This social app offers you that .

Moments : It is similar to Face Book profile with all the sophisticated sharing features it offers .Your happy moments can be shared through Photos or Videos among your friends .You can also have a cover photo for your profile just like Face Book does.

Getting Social

Look Around : This app locates people within few kilometres in your location  using location-based services.You can find Mr.Pat using this app in your next door or Mrs.Gag using the same 2 kms away.

Shake : I found this one really cool. Ever wondered that shaking your mobile finds you friends.Yes,that was this choice does. It can locate people even as far as 1000 kms away in China, India or Portugal with just this hand signal .

Shake & Look around feature

Drift Bottle :This feature reminds me  the olden ways where messages are shared using paper inside a bottle thrown into the sea.This app does the same but virtually. You write a message and throw into the virtual sea and let someone new find it from the sea and replies to you unless a starfish confronts you.

Drift Bottle (Photo credits : wechatapp.com)

What an incredibly easy way to add your friends by shaking your phones together, scanning QR codes, syncing with your Face book account or phone contacts, sharing IDs, or using location-based services. Overall, this app offers less work with interesting ways to connect new and old friends .

After the work of adding and finding your old and new friends is done, now the real fun of chatting comes.Do you want Emoticon  ,Image , Video or Video Chat Live with your friends ? Yes!

You name it and it is there !

Features and Addition

Pros & Cons of this app

Pros: Apart from the novelty this app offers ,this app has a sound presence with its novelty in chatting as briefed above.To use the best of this app from the android market, you and your friends has to use WeChat and then no one is going to stop you.The speed is fast and sitting from UK , you can send a faster message to Turkey.And if you have connected your FB friends, then be ready for a typing war.It also offers the convince of grouping your friends/family together and then do a group chat. A well designed app for conversation at great speed l.

A new feature Video which has been added recently lets you to group video chat. The mobiles in -build camera works at its best for you and you can talk roaming around with just a click on the go. A cool app which is totally free offers you ads-free HD Video Chat.

Sharing Files and Chatting through PC
Extendability of using WeChat even from PC through the browser is by scanning the code displayed in web.wechatapp.com .One addition here is "File Transfer" where we can transfer files (text, image, audio, video, and any other file types) between my phone and my computer with File Transfer. We can also to the same with our contacts in WeChat.

File Transfer between PC and Mobile phone

Video Chat and Voice Messaging :
Another great leap in this social app making it popularity grow very fast. Using this service, it is very easy to send and receive voice messages at greater speed as well as use web cam on the mobile to its best.

Voice Messaging /Voice Chat

From the above image you can see that to use Voice Messaging, you got to Press& Hold the button on the right side for sending your Voice Message. A sophisticated way of using free Voice Chat on Mobile/Tablet/IOS .

Video Calling
To use this free feature, just click on the add button on the lower bar of the app and choose Video Call (see Features and Addition Image above ) .

Video Chat [credits : GooglePlay]

Plugins
With couple of plugins pre-installed plugins, WeChat offers more.Moments , a new plugins uses Face Book like feature with a WeChat cover and options for text, photo as well video sharing (see "getting social " image above).

Cons : Being a Chinese social app , whenever you stumble upon someone or someone stumbles upon you he/she happens to be a Chinese.Rarely we happen to meet an English speaking one.Also,  it also surprises you with a ping from unknown people cleverly using this app for inappropriate use and this personally doesn't work for me.But still, being a part of "look around" and "shake", it offers loads of fun for people who love to make new friends .If I have to offer one suggestion for improvement, it will be that there should exist a way to acknowledges this app as relevant to Face Book/Twitter and using them for proper use other than unknown flirting hiding their identity .

Neutral  View: As far as the privacy is concerned , I feel that unless we allow this app to post on your behalf on the FB wall when used Face Book to sign in, otherwise with use of We Chat ID's and QR codes , this app is perfectly safe and  fine chatting with new people with its Fact sheet

• Protects user data by offering on-demand contact list backup and retrieval to/from our cloud-based service.
• Provides a secure and robust social networking platform that emphasizes user privacy and fast response performance.

When compared to other social apps giants like FaceBook , Twitter, Tango , Palringo , etc that flocks the Internet , Android Markets, Google Play and iTunes, WeChat Social Media app offers the combined effects/results that all the above specified apps offers. WeChat apps multimedia communication flexibility and convenience offers hassle free text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, Video/Audio calling, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, photo/video sharing, location sharing, and contact information exchange at all in One.

Overall, WeChat is a new mobile voice and text chat application with board opportunity to make life more sociable with interesting features updating every now and then absolutely free .

Download Link (free ) - delivered straight to your Mobile Phones using Sync : WeChat