Facebook for Android Now Handling SMS Messages

Tech Crunch

Earlier this year Facebook informed users that they were planning on implementing SMS integration through Facebook Messenger. This would allow you to send and receive text messages through your Messenger app, but this integration is only available on Android devices.

For some people, this will seem kind of pointless as if you have Messenger, then chances are you won't be texting very many people anyway.  However, for others, this will be great as it means they can send stickers and voice clips and so on when they text a friend who doesn't use Messenger. There are some things you won't be able to do though like send GIFs, request an Uber, send money or video call someone so you will still need to have Messenger conversations with people. The text conversations will still cost you and they will stand out from your Facebook messages even though they will also use chat heads. Text conversations will be purple, but if that friend is on Facebook then they'll show you their information to encourage you to talk to them on Messenger rather than texting them.

This isn't something that will take over your phone if you don't want it to, though. If you don't want to use Facebook Messenger as an SMS client then you don't need to do anything. If you want to give it a go, then you need to go into your SMS settings and change your client to Facebook Messenger. You don't have to worry about your text messages becoming data on the Facebook servers as they will stay stored on your phone. All this client change means is that you can read and respond to texts in Facebook Messenger so you don't ever have to close the app.

The question is how many people are actually going to switch to Facebook Messenger. I know people who use Messenger a lot and rarely text, but they don't see the point in moving their texts over to Messenger. Being able to use stickers is great, but unless they can send GIFs, it's not doing anything too impressive. Facebook are pointing out that they've just turned Messenger into a typical SMS client so this basically means that you aren't really getting any benefits of using it for texts and Messenger.

Of course, it's always worth giving something a try at least once so you can see if it is more practical for you. Last time Facebook tried something like this, they had to close it down as it didn't really work. We'll just have to see if that's the case this time or whether it's a raving success.

Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird writer with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is glad to be playing around with apps and writing about them in the mean time! Follow her @Songbird_Rosina

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