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RE: So you think SMS is dying? Think again.

tautitan123 10th Jun 2008

I'm not entirely sure that IM is the best way to go. Here in the UK on 3 we get free mobile windows live messenger for the life of the contract and I don't use it all that much, I prefer to send text messages. I do a lot of other things on my phone besides using the IM function and on a K800 it's not all that convenient to have a fullscreen application running all the time, apart form the fact you can do little else whilst being bombarded by messages from your buddies it considerably drains your battery having the application running all the time. Perhaps on phones with larger screens and better battery life IM would be a great replacement for SMS but not on the majority of phones. Speaking of being bombarded with IM messages, how many people you know respect someones status on IM? How many times do you set yourself to "away", "busy" or "out to lunch" only to come back and find that you have 20 messages from various people asking why you aren't there, or that they know you're there but just don't want to talk to them? This is the only other problem I have with IM over SMS and Email; everyone always expects you to answer right away, no matter what else you might be doing when signed in. SMS is basically perfect as a text based answering machine, if you don't reply straight away nobody gets offended and I don't have to sift through 20 messages to find out who actually really did need to speak to me about something.