Instant messaging app, WhatsApp has been under heat since it announced its new privacy policy late last year. The new privacy policy was supposed to take effect this month, but the instant messaging app owned by parent company Facebook delayed effecting the new privacy policy because it wanted its users to have more time to decide. WhatsApp’s new policy has been most controversial in India and this has led the government to provide an alternative to WhatsApp for its citizens. India’s alternative to WhatsApp is called Sandes which literally translates to English.
Since the new privacy policy that has been causing a lot of controversy, many alternatives both old and new have suddenly come to limelight. Alternatives like Signal, Sandes, Discord, Slack, Keybase, Telegram, etc., have come to limelight. In fact, Telegram is in front of all other apps when it comes to instant messaging service. Telegram was the most downloaded non-gaming app in the month of January this year and one interesting thing to know about this is that, it wasn’t a part of the top five most downloaded apps in December last year. Telegram is one of the best, if not the best alternative to WhatsApp.
Although WhatsApp already has some of Telegram’s new features, Telegram’s new features make the already desirable app more desirable. Telegram’s new update promises to sweep WhatsApp under the carpet and here are some of the improvement that will tickle your fancy.
Chat Widgets
Telegram gets chat widgets that will make access to your latest chats easier and faster. They will appear in your home screen of users, and allow users to see a preview of latest messages or only the name of the sender of the recent message (as preferred) as well as the profile picture of the sender. The home screen widget can be expandable on android but can only get fresh updates occasionally on iOS, and according to Telegram this can be attributed to system limitations.
Auto-delete feature
Telegram’s new auto-delete feature will give users the ability to set an auto-delete timer for sent messages. This feature is already available on Telegram’s ‘secret messages’ but is leaving the vault to become a part of the whole app. According to the company’s blogpost, the auto-delete feature can automatically delete messages after 24 hours or seven days after they have been sent, depending on what users want. In groups, only admin(s) can enable this feature for messages sent in a group.
Expiring links
The new update will allow group links to be rendered inactive anytime. This saves the trouble of random or more people joining the group, or the group link being sent out for people to join which cannot be controlled. Group links can now be made inactive at any time saving Telegram users who run groups on the platform a lot of stress.
Groups can take the big leap and convert to Broadcast groups
The new Telegram update will allow groups that have members of almost 200,000, to convert to broadcast groups that have unlimited members limit. The downside to this is that only admins can send messages to this group.
Telegram added the chat import feature last month. This enables users to import their chat history from WhatsApp and is a way of preparing those who plan on rejecting WhatsApp’s new privacy policy for the switch to Telegram. This way they retain all their chat history after turning their backs on WhatsApp. Telegram has indeed risen from one of those apps to the app. We’ll also be letting you know if it retains the title of the most downloaded non-gaming app this month.
Paul Balo is the founder of TechBooky and a highly skilled wireless communications professional with a strong background in cloud computing, offering extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing wireless communication systems.
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