There are so many platforms of phones nowadays: iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia Symbian and Android, etc. Unless you are in the “family” or “company” plan, your calls/SMS outside the family/company plan will be chargeable.

If both parties subscribed to cellular data plan and want to communicate via instant messaging/chat BUT with different phone platforms — then how???

Put it in another words, assuming phone A is iPhone (from Maxis) and phone B is Blackberry (from Digi or Celcom). Are they able to chat FREE using their existing data plan without SMS charges?

There are basically two options:

Option 1 – using paid applications such as Beejive which supports simultaneous IM on AIM, iChat, MobileMe, MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo!, MySpace, GoogleTalk, ICQ and Jabber on both the iPhone and Blackberry. The Beejive application cost USD9.90 (equivalent to about RM33)

Option  2 – using a FREE application called WhatsApp. However, this application is completely FOC.

Currently (after trying out so many FREE applications) IMHO, WhatsApp is the “best” so far for use between iPhone and Blackberry.

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In addition to messaging, both iPhone and BlackBerry WhatsApp Messenger we can send each other unlimited images, video and audio media messages. Cool right?

According to WhatsApp website, they are going to roll out Android and Symbian versions soon. So for those non-iPhone and non-Blackberry users, I am afraid you have to wait for a while then.

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