[App Fridays] MobiTexter allows users to reject calls, send and receive SMSs through their laptop

Many of us have missed an important phone call or a text message at some point. This could have been because we were either glued to our laptop working on something and our smartphone was set to vibrate or was ringing but outside our audible range. MobiTexter has come out with an app to solve this problem.

What is it?

The app titled, ‘Text SMS Message from Computer’ does what it states, allows users to receive and respond to text messages from their laptops, desktops, through the app’s web browser site or browser extension. It also supports smartwatches integrated with a smartphone.

Standard messaging charges apply when a user replies either through the mobile app or the web browser site or extension. But if the recipient of the message also uses the app, then there is a facility to send a MT message which is free for all MobiTexter users. Users can also send text messages directly from their computers to the contacts already synced with their Google account.

Unique features:

-Users can get incoming call notifications and reject them on their desktop and send a few predefined emergency text messages such as ‘I am busy. I will call you later’ or ‘I'm in a meeting.’ etc.

- Users can also schedule SMSs for anytime in the future.Use cases for this could be wishing someone on their birthday, sending a text reminder about an event etc.

-For those worried about message security and privacy, users can also send self destruct text messages to others on the platform. The sender can set it to self destruct after one, two, five or 10 minutes intervals.

- Send personalized messages to a group of people: users can send "Hi [first name]" to a group and each contact will receive a text with their first name.

-Text messages are synched across all devices and users can filter through text messages between date ranges. There is a facility for users to print and email text conversation threads and create SMS backups and share messages with their friends on Facebook.

-Also with the most recent update, users can now send their current location via a message and upload files and images for messaging other users of the app.

Monetization

The app is free to download and use. The developers have been able to generate interest in their product and using the API have developed custom apps for a few small businesses. Their goal is to build a large user base for their app and also integrate their API into mainstream apps so that users will be able to communicate with the concerned personnel without having to exit the concerned app and use a separate messaging service.The team behind it

This initiative was co-founded by Adarsh Kumar and Devashish Mamgain, who were colleagues at Xora and Azuga. They graduated in Computer Science Engineering in 2009 and worked for about five years before they decided to start out something on their own.

Both are techies with domain expertise in messaging, vehicle tracking and location based services. Devashish specializing in server and Android side development while Adarsh specializing in Android and J2EE. They decided to explore messaging and started MobiTexter. The team also consists of one server side engineer, Shanki Gupta, and three other part-time interns.

What we liked

The app has a nice UI and UX without any ads and all the features are self-explanatory. I was successfully able to send and receive text messages on my laptop and also get a notification, whenever someone called me on my phone. Other small but significant features I liked were the ability to customize settings based on my preference. For example, users can assign an automatic signature at the end of each text, arrange their texts in ascending or descending order etc.

What could be improved?

When I received a quick ‘missed call’ the notification on my laptop showed up and immediately disappeared, before I could interact with it and respond. The ability to customize and set a timer for how long these notifications should be visible before they disappear would be beneficial.

YS verdict

The app makes communication easier and users can go about their work on their laptops or desktops without having to check their mobiles on a regular basis to see if they have missed anything important.

The developers also have plans to integrate their app and it will be interesting to see how they go about it and implement it for B2B solutions.

Website: MobiTexter, Chrome Extension