[Kozmik1]

I was in Cape Town, South Africa last week working from my mobile hotspot during one of the rolling power blackouts and Gmail and Slack on the web browser were both so slow they were effectively dead. I was hunting around (with poor connectivity) and for the life of me could not find the link to the HTML version of gmail from my laptop. I supposedly had "5G" from my T-Mobile International Data Pass.

Also sometimes phone calls and very frequently SMS messages would not go through in many parts of South Africa including Cape Town. I still received mail through my IMAP connections and we switched to Whatsapp for work communications, which appears to be stable for most any low bandwidth or intermittent connectivity situation. Through my 1 week in Africa I didn't miss any messages at all on Whatsapp and was able to send messages any time I had signal. Whatsapp voice calls worked pretty well. Slack on my mobile seemed to work but I was not sure if it was synching in real time. Slack voice calls I was told were pretty bad from my side.

We've seen a huge rise in Whatsapp use recently when working in our colleagues in less developed areas.

I initially loathed dealing with "yet another messaging app" when people started using Whatsapp, but it's great to see a tool that's robust enough to work in non-optimal connectivity.

[nico]

> "yet another messaging app"

Outside of the US, Whatsapp is pretty much _the_ messaging app

[wsc981]

In Thailand (and I believe in Japan as well, maybe also other SEA countries like Malaysia) LINE [0] is number one.

And it’s quite nifty as an “everything” app (kinda what Elon wants to do with Twitter/X).

———

[0]: https://line.me/en/

[niutech]

Not everywhere. Telegram is popular in India and Russia. And WeChat is popular in China.

[TacticalCoder]

> Outside of the US, Whatsapp is pretty much _the_ messaging app

In Europe Telegram is huge. 1 billion Telegram users in the world, with 700 MAU (and there are already some countries where Telegram is the most used messenger).

I refuse to use WhatsApp (and don't have FB). Most of my friends and family are on Telegram. Many have both and use both interchangeably.

[hyperhopper]

In my experience, in Europe 90% of messaging is through Instagram, Whatsapp use is rare.

[guraf]

You clearly live in a bubble, I've never heard of ig being used for im.

[ludwik]

As a European, I always thought that using Instagram for IM is something that only Americans do...

[ossusermivami]

mostly young people I believe, my nephew classroom are all chatting on instagram while the only friends i know who has instagram group chats are some kind of heavy instagram users like influencers..

[Tijdreiziger]

You appear to be living in a very different Europe than me…

[belter]

"Global usage of messaging apps and statistics" - https://engage.sinch.com/blog/global-messenger-apps-usage-st...

If you are in a hurry: https://engage.sinch.com/sites/default/files/styles/x_large_...

[ffgjgf1]

It’s 80% FB messenger where I am.

[fuzztester]

This subthread reminds of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

[botanical]

Eh, I'm in South Africa and mobile and fibre internet work well for me during loadshedding (This goes for gmail, Slack, etc.).

> Also sometimes phone calls and very frequently SMS messages would not go through in many parts of South Africa including Cape Town

You say in many parts, really? What other parts?

Maybe get a local SIM if where you're staying doesn't have fibre; is this not a T-Mobile issue?

[danielhep]

This is likely a TMobile issue since the connection gets proxies back to the US when using their roaming service, which slows things down a lot.

[MichaelZuo]

Isn’t email even more reliable then Whatsapp?

[navane]

Not when the web Gmail client requires 40mb of crust just to read or send 1kb messages

[diffeomorphism]

So why use the web client instead of a proper desktop one?

[alternatex]

Google hasn't built one and the generic ones aren't all that great.

[guraf]

Right. So let's not use the imperfect local clients that still work well. Let's just keep complaining about how Google is a big meanie for not making mail.google.com work offline (somehow) instead.

[carlosjobim]

The stock Mac mail client is excellent, millions of people use Outlook or Thunderbird, and there's even better third party clients available.

[paulddraper]

Really? There's not a single great email app?

Opportunity there I guess.

[sangnoir]

Email has higher overhead than WhatsApp

[niutech]

Not necessarily, see Delta Chat.

[niutech]

Why use Whatsapp which is not private and owned by Meta? Better use Signal or Delta Chat: https://delta.chat

[timeon]

> my laptop

How about local client?

[doubled112]

I always feel like I'm the odd person out preferring local clients for everything. The less I need a browser for, the happier I seem.

I still use Thunderbird because I have a half a dozen email accounts.

It was probably too late for them, but for me this would have just worked.

[subhro]

> I always feel like I'm the odd person out preferring local clients for everything

No you are not. I prefer to use local clients for everything as well.