Messengers confidently pushed SMS out of use, leaving them with narrow niches like confirming banking transactions. But some market leader among such services has not yet emerged.

Therefore, today we will look at the main features of the popular WhatsApp messaging system, both positive and negative.

And those and others are more than enough, as, indeed, with competing services. Well, you can download WhatsApp for Windows at https://install.download/windows/whatsapp. 

We communicate for free .

Since the beginning of 2016, there has been no charge for using WhatsApp. A dollar a year after 12 months of use and paid app downloads from theAppStore are a thing of the past. To date, downloading the official client for any platform (Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS) is absolutely free, as well as any of its functions.

Friendly interface

Compared to the same Viber, this messenger is much more pleasant in appearance and easy to use. Many small but very convenient features make communication more comfortable.

These include, for example, the mass deletion of messages, eliminating the need to do this one by one. For mobile users, this is a very important aspect.

Enough phone number

During the WhatsApp registration process, the user's phone number is used as a login. For some, this is a plus, no need to fool around, inventing a nickname, unlike the same Skype.

In addition, you can immediately identify the interlocutor. For someone - on the contrary, a minus: the cell number refers to personal data, and it can "light up" where it is useless.

Automatic synchronization with the phone book

A controversial point: it is very convenient for someone to immediately get a complete list of acquaintances who already have a connection on WhatsApp. For others - "The Matrix is ​​coming": contacts are sent to who knows what server!

In addition, according to the results of some studies, it turned out that the encryption is purely symbolic - a normal desktop computer can easily handle the reverse decryption.

Video by weight

Restriction when sending video messages limits only the file size - no more than 16 MB.

In the same Viber, this quality is the duration of the video - 3 minutes, while the resolution is not taken into account. It's probably not very logical.

We are speaking purely concretely

Among the features of the WhatsApp messenger is a very convenient ability to create a tree structure of the chat, i.e., to respond to a specific message, regardless of its position in the feed.

Or, say, comment on the sent picture. Most other messengers do not allow such liberties, everything is linear in them: messages can only be added to the end of the chat feed.

Share your smile

WhatsApp organizes mailings very conveniently: if a user wants to send a photo from a smartphone to several friends at once, this is very easy to do using the appropriate tools in the contact list.

On the other hand, this opens up opportunities for spammers ... who are immediately closed by the service itself with special algorithms.

Security is not up to par

Many people know that the security of WhatsApp, due to a number of its features, leaves much to be desired. The service has become a favorite "whipping boy" for any expert in this matter and those who consider themselves as such.

Moreover, we are talking not only and not so much about “holes” that owe their appearance to crooked developers, but about espionage and conspiracy scandals.

Since Facebook, which bought the service, according to many, is closely connected with the special services, there is nothing surprising in this: scandals over privacy violations in which this social network is involved occur with the frequency of the change of seasons.

Among the recent ones, we can name a backdoor discovered in 2017, which allowed service administrators to covertly change encryption keys for a specific user. Moreover, Facebook openly stated: this is “not a bug, but a feature”, as it should be.

Conclusion

Any current messenger is constantly evolving, its functionality is being supplemented, and the interface is improving. In addition, their owners jealously monitor competitors and seek to pick up any promising innovation, within the framework of patent protection, of course.

Perhaps, already at the moment, some of the mentioned advantages of WhatsApp have been leveled by analogues in the same Viber or Skype, and the disadvantages have been eliminated by the developers.