I have a friend that likes to slack off in her college classes by text messaging on her iPhone. She asked if I would assist her in this slacking, but since I have no cell phone, I wasn’t sure how I could text her. In comes the Textfree app. You can text any number, for free, over wifi with your iPod Touch.
Features: This app is very simple. You just punch in the number you want to text, type a message, and thats it. It can import your iPhone contacts so you don’t have to reenter them all in. It shows your texts in conversation form so you can easily see the back and forth. You can enter your phone number if you wish. Texts from this app to a person who also has this app are free as well. And the nicest feature is that if your device is off or sleeping, it will email you the texts.
Drawbacks: If you have an iPhone you can enter in your number and use this as your texting app. It is a little confusing to explain why you would do this, if the app can send text messages for free without a number. Here is the problem, when you use the free texting without your own number, the recipient gets a text from a different number each time. A minor inconvenience because on the recipients iPhone, it will start a new text conversation for each text you send them. This makes it harder for them to follow conversations. It does show your username in the text so they know who it is from and they can still reply to any of your messages and it will get back to you. So really, it doesn’t effect you, it might annoy your friends though.
Conclusions: This app does what it is supposed to. It doesn’t have a super fancy interface, nor a lot of options to configure. This app is perfect for people who could not text otherwise, or cannot afford an unlimited texting plan for their phone. If you meet those criteria, then I would definitely recommend it. It is a bit pricey, but you aren’t really paying for the app, you are paying for the service. And a one time fee of $5.99 for unlimited texting isn’t a bad deal.
I give Textfree 4 out of 5 crackberries
Price: $5.99
