Viber - App Review

 

If your main aim in life is to pay as much as you can to your mobile telecoms operator, please stop reading now.

 

As you are still reading, you are obviously one of the (silent) majority, who are keen to put their mobile phone to the best use possible, without racking up horrendous bills.

 

Viber allows you to make calls and send text messages between handsets for free, provided that the caller has access to Wi-Fi, and that the respondent has also signed up to Viber. Obviously the messaging aspect is not too important to all the people in the iPhone community, as the iMessaging App is already included in iOS 5 and above.

 

Signing up is a painless exercise (you can do it here), and once you have done that, the App will check your contacts for those that are already members. You can also invite people from your address book to join Viber.

 

There are Viber Apps for: iOS (iPhone), Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry (although these are only for messaging). So there are a lot of mobile phones that can communicate with each other for free.

Now for the ACIDS test:

Aesthetics
You are presented with a list of your contacts, clearly indicating who has already joined Viber (be prepared for some surprises). You can easily restrict the list to Viber only. Making a call is then as straightforward as ever. Nothing flash but, very intuitive.

Cost
It's absolutely free so, you can't complain.

Indispensability
In the sense that your iPhone already works as a very good mobile phone, Viber is not at all indispensable but, to the extent that it is free, it scores points.

Dependability
The call quality is variable, from very good to pretty well unintelligible. The good news is that you can call back and usually be rewarded with better a better audio quality. There is one irritating aspect in that, if you have an incoming call from the mobile network, at the same time that you are on a Viber call then, the latter is simply (very rudely) dropped.

Security
I think it unlikely that calls themselves are compromised. If you are in the unenvious position of being monitored to that point, life is probably hell already. I would be more concerned about the security of your address book.


ACIDS Test Rating:

 Very good App but slightly flawed

To find out how the ACIDS Test works, click here.

 

You can get information on Viber here and the iPad App here.