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Android App of the Week – Viber
Fri, 10th Aug 2012
FYI, this story is more than a year old

The more free NZ to NZ texts we get for our phones, the more stingy we seem to get when it comes to paying for texting and calling overseas.

So while it’s too bad for those who are smart phone-less, it’s lucky for the rest of us that we have wonderful things like Viber.

Viber sure has been around for some time, and there have plenty of updates. But with my best mate making the move to That Place (Aussie), it has become an essential part of my day-to-day communicating.

The thing that makes it great is that most people have it. When I got my phone and asked people what I should use to text and call my overseas friends, almost everyone said Viber, because you can connect with people with Androids and iPhones. Yay.

Of course I’ve got a couple of pet peeves. Calls often drop off. Texts and pxts (are they still call pxts?) run smoothly every time, but with the latest update, calling people seems to be hit and miss. Hopefully they sort this out soon. When it is working sweet, the call quality is brilliant and the app tells you if you’ve got good coverage or not, so you know what to expect.

It would also be good if there was an option to turn off the "pop” sound when a message is sent or received. If you’re listening to music it can get irritating.

I like that you can add your photo and a username to your Viber account that your friends can see, giving you another outlet to be narcissistic and vain, and we all love that.

If you didn’t catch on from my earlier scorn for paying for intentional texts, I’m pretty cheap. So of course the best thing about Viber is that it’s free.

If you’re even cheaper than me you could just never top up your phone or pay your contract and just go on contacting everyone using Viber with wifi. Just make sure your friends have it too!