As you may know, Whatsapp wants everyone to use its official application. One of the most popular third party Whatsapp clients is Whatsapp+. Why so?
Freedom
Ummm, because hell yeah, you can!
Ok, for Android device users in the know, choice is something they love. The freedom. That is what Whatsapp+ represents. It is a modded version of the official Whatsapp app that gives you more flexibility. It has been around from 2012 and to demonstrate the freedom they enjoy, Android users who know what they want have been going for it ever since.
Themes
If you have been using Whatsapp on Android devices for a while then you know that it took forever for Whatsapp to update their application to conform with Google’s Holo Yolo design guidelines. For many an Android enthusiast, every time Google releases new design guidelines, they expect them to be rolled out to their favourite applications as well. Other messaging apps like Telegram have already done so. Whatsapp? Not yet. So if you really want a Material Design-themed Whatsapp app where do you turn to? This is where Whatsapp+ comes in. It has had hundreds of themes for a while. Users simply choose a theme of their choice and customize the app to suit their tastes. On the official app you can only change the chat background image. Nothing more. These visual themes are the biggest selling point for Whatsapp+ and others like it.
Emoticons
They’ve always been available on Whatsapp but Whatsapp+ presents a wider collection and its users love them. Those emojis from Google’s Hangouts? Yes, you can have them on Whatsapp+ as well. The other party needs to have Whatsapp+ installed as well to see the additional emoticons though.
Last seen
Are you irked by the fact that everyone you’re chatting with on Whatsapp can see when you’re online? Even good old 2go allowed you to turn this off. Remember the “Away” option? 🙂 The official Whatsapp app doesn’t shield you from this, Whatsapp+ does. I stand to be corrected here.
For the longest time ever, one of the things that had gotten people into lots of trouble with their friends and acquaintances was that “Last Seen” notification. Before Whatsapp finally gave users an option to remove it, Whatsapp+ had already built its reputation as being the go-to app for making sure you don’t get a breakup text for simply not replying to a text on time yet you’ve been online chatting up other people all that time.
The blue ticks. Hell broke loose when those two blue ticks first appeared last November. So incensed were the users that Whatsapp had to provide an official “fix” through its website enabling users to install a Whatsapp app version that allows the removal of the Read Receipts feature. As much as it gave, it also took. By disabling the feature you also had to forfeit your chances of knowing when a friend read your messages. Whatsapp+ was the silent go-to place to avoid all the dust the blue ticks had brought. You can even avoid the Read status black/grey double check marks.
File sharing
Whatsapp used to have restrictions on the size of the files you could upload until it became a bit flexible recently (joke on you, they only increased the upload limit from 12 MB to 16 MB). Whatsapp+ has for the longest time had 50 MB as the limit. For video sharers in your social circles, they’ve hardly had any options beyond Whatsapp+.
Image compression
The official Whatsapp application compresses your images. You may hardly notice this but it does. Whatsapp+? Hell no!
Seemingly endless customization options
You can change how those pop-up chat notifications appear. Have friends who can’t help but send you voice notes all the damn time? You can disable this one too. Love having a Whatsapp widget for quicker messaging (honestly, who does that anyway?), Whatsapp+ gives you much more control over its size and even colour. You can also change the colour, header and size of chat images and your contact’s images on Whatsapp+.
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Hit the settings menu on your Whatsapp and weep because there isn’t much to begin with. As such, it is going to be very awkward for all those Whatsapp+ users who’ve been using it since the release of the first version. I’m sure they’ve even forgotten how the official Whatsapp looks like. It is pretty much barebones. While we don’t encourage you to violate the terms of Whatsapp, we can’t help but sympathize with Whatsapp+ and WhatsappMD diehard users who now have to downgrade to the barebones official applications lest they face more bans.
There are questions being raised as to the safety of the third party apps but there is no proof so far that there has been abuse of the platform courtesy of the third party apps. End-to-end encryption is still enforced and decryption only happens at the user’s (message recipient) end.
