For years I’ve been a heavy iOS user. Not only do my wife and I both have iPhones, we also have had an iPad since the first generation. Being that the majority of my contacts have also been iPhone users, iMessage has really allowed me to send/receive message to a lot of my contact using both my iPad and my iPhone. Over the last couple months I’ve found more of my contacts making the leap to a variety of Android based devices, thus making iMessage less helpful each day. The final nail in the coffin for iMessages appeal to me came when I officially bought a Nexus 7 tablet (review coming soon) – I needed a better messenger.

After talking with a variety of friends and family trying to found a solution (some super geeky, some average joes) we all found ourselves stumped to find a multi platform messaging system. Many people suggested WhatsApp but I quickly realized that it only operates on a single-device-registration structure. Furthermore, WhatsApp does not support tablets officially and therefore the thought of even getting it working on a Nexus 7 was a tough one… I continued my search.

My next exploration came with Google Talk. Google Talk seemed like a great messenger to use as not only was it available from Gmail, it was also available in App and Program form. I quickly ran into a hiccup discovering that there was no actual Google branded app for iPhone and I had to rely on a third party app. Finally, the lack of picture sending capability (combine with some sync issues I encountered) scratched Google Talk off the list. I continued to search through apps trying everything from Skype to ICQ but all of them were full of a variety of limitations – such as lack of notification integration to lack of syncing ability. After days of hunting I was ready to give up… but then I discovered ‘mysms’. Boasting availability on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows Desktop, OsX and even via a web interface, mysms appeared to be what I was looking for.

After days of solid use on my iPhone, Nexus 7 and even my Desktop PC, I have to admit that mysms is by far the best messenger I have ever come across. The setup for mysms is very similar to many other phone based services (such as WhatsApp) where by signing up for the application you register your phone number with the service to be you your main way to connect with friends. Once again just like WhatsApp, mysms will search your address book for other users in your contacts that have signed up for their service. During the account setup, the user configures a password which then is used to login on any other platform – including via the web interface. Similar to Apple’s iMessage service, any message sent or received via mysms will show up on any location you have signed into the service.

Testing other messenger services in the past, one thing I tend to find is that if by chance synchronization amongst multiple devices is available, it is often delayed from device to device. I’m pleased to report that so far I’ve not encountered any delay between devices. In fact, as I sit here writing this, my wife and I have been messaging back and forth at a very fast rate. I’ve also noticed that when I receive a message it pops up on my desktop notification almost at the exact same time as my iPhone as well – I am very impressed.

An example of the mysms notification (top left: Android, right: iPhone, bottom left: Windows Desktop).

With everything above being said, I will admit there are a few quirks that I’ve discovered. For example, if I send a message on a device other than the desktop app (not to be confused with the web app), sometimes I have to manually refresh the conversation for my side to show up. Keep in mind that this is only my side of the conversation and I’ve never seen this happen with any incoming messages. A further foot note is that I have not encountered this issue on any other platform other than the Windows program. I also have to report that I did encounter an error earlier in the week where the server appeared to have gone down for an hour or two. This has only happened once so far. On the flip side, I should report that I ended up having a Facebook discussion with someone who claimed to be a long time user of mysms and she said that it been at least 5 months since she last saw an issue – not bad considering I’ve had more issues with iMessage.

Although I’m an iPhone user, it does appear that mysms offers significantly more features for Android phone users, presumably because of the iOS restrictions. In recent months you may have heard of services popping up for Android that allow users to synchronize their text messages through a desktop interface. For example, ‘MightyText’ users are able to send and receive SMS Text messages from their computer. The way services like this work is that your Android phone essentially becomes a routing service for incoming/outgoing messages. Well guess what? Mysms does this too for Android Phone users, only better in my opinion.

Even though I do not have an Android phone, I do know someone who does and they have sort of been my guinea pig for testing this aspect of mysms. When they installed mysms on their Android phone, all of their messages were synced to the mysms system and therefore were retrievable on any platform they logged in to. Just like the previous example with MightyText, once Android phone users install the app, they are now able to send and receive text messages via any of the platforms available (well at least the ones we’ve tested). Where mysms blows away competition such as MightyText is that there is the option to prioritize how messages are sent, which means that you can specify that if the recipient is a mysms user and the message will go via data rather than text (sounds familiar, almost like iMessage…). Now as cool as this all sounds, keep in mind you MUST have an Android based phone in order to use the SMS Text Messaging features I’ve described. iPhone users are limited to only sending messages to other mysms users (basically think of it as a multi platform version of WhatsApp).

An example of a conversation on my Nexus 7, my Windows Desktop and my iPhone

If you’re ready to check out mysms but are concerned because your messages are going to be synced to a server, you may be wondering whether or not the data is safe. While I can’t speak of any personal tests with the security, mysms does claim that the messages are encrypted and sent via SSL. Regardless, if you’re willing to text message something such as passwords or other sensitive data, you probably don’t care that much about security anyway.

Overall, even with the iPhone limitations considered, I am going to start suggesting to everyone I know to try out mysms. The message sync between the multiple platforms is just incredible and I am EXTREMELY impressed with its responsiveness. If you’re cheap like me, you’ll be happy to hear that as far as I can tell the phone versions (as well as Windows Desktop Program and Web Interface) are free, and the tablet versions and OsX version are a reasonable price. Based on my current trial with it, MySMS is by far the best multi platform messenger I’ve encountered.