The ever-increasing number of messaging apps had forced Google to take a major step in order to try to neutralise the market with a less invasive feature. So with the introduction to KitKat and new Google+ features they introduced the new Hangouts App which not only is the regular Hangouts/Gtalk App for Google Contacts and your Google+ Circle contacts but doubles up as your default/standard SMS App.
So Samsung did the same with their ChatON App. ChatON now supports SMS & MMS along with the regular free messaging service it already had. Samsung claims the new features offers the best performance on S3, S4 and Note2 and Note 3 devices but ChatON has been supporting all devices running ICS ( Ice Cream Sandwich ) and above. To enable this feature you need the latest version of ChatON or update your App to the latest version. As being on ANdroid, you can choose to use it as your default SMS app after update or choose not to use it for SMS. The decision is yours.Facebook had integrated this in their messenger before but nobody used it ( literally nobody ) and they killed the SMS integration in their recent update. Samsung claims most Samsung device owners use ChatON regularly and religiously and they have few million users using it actively.
Now you would be wondering why would Samsung introduce such a thing when Android has already made this available in their Hangouts App. The answer is Samsung is trying to move out and build their own ecosystem like Apple ( no surprises here huh!? ) has one with iOS. Just like how Apple controls how their devices update, receive updates, get bug fixes, get new features and how default apps are strictly owned and meant to be used by every Apple user. Samsung is looking into doing something similar.
As strong rumours go, Samsung might give a boot to Android on their devices in near future. They tried this before with the new Bada OS which was ground-up a start-from-scratch Operating System by Samsung for Samsung Wave series of devices. It didn’t work out well so they moved on and killed it early this year, but Samsung didn’t stop there. They went ahead and integrated the Bada OS developement and the team into their new baby project for developing Tizen ( Linux based ) operating system. Intel and many other companies have joined hands to help Samsung develop Tizen.
So still confused whats going ON? Samsung has made TouchWiz UI so different from stock Android that they want to replace every possible stock App from Android to their own App which they want people to start using and use it regularly. This way it would get easy for Samsung to convince users to switch to Tizen OS which mostly likely be TouchWiz UI. This would help Samsung to tell their users that the transition would be seamless and all your favorite Samsung Apps and TouchWiz UI would still be the same and they won’t feel anything has changed but everything under the wrapper would be changed to Tizen.
Ya I know a wild move and a bold assumption but this will likely happen to give Samsung control over how the software / OS is consumed by users and easy for them to keep it updated and provide upgrades to every device they launch every few months however they want.
Coming back to ChatON, the new SMS & MMS integration is not available on the iOS App and mostly likely won’t be provided to that App. Its only available in the Android App which you can download from here.
