WhatsApp – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My 1st device to start the WhatsApp with was my Samsung Galaxy S2. I sat on the bus going through Hamburg St. Pauli, and my mobile phone Internet connection wasn’t really all that stable. It changed from 3G (whatever variant of UMTS) through E (EDGE) through G (GSM), and WhatsApp kept saying “Initializing …” for ages. I looked the situation up on the Internet, once I was at my place, and I was a little worried. I decided to simply end the respective active application, to go through Wi-Fi on the Android device this time, and start it again. In other words: no I did not attempt to wipe the installation on the device. WhatsApp came back almost instantly and successfully, and I had a registered account from then on.
Is it true, (quoting from the Wikipedia article) “that WhatsApp required users to upload their entire mobile phone’s address book to WhatsApp servers so that WhatsApp could discover who, among the users’ existing contacts, is available via WhatsApp“? Damn WhatsApp, if they dare to spam my contacts!
From the WhatsApp FAQ: “Is my device supported?” [link]
… We currently do not support tablets, computers, or Wi-Fi only devices, and do not plan to do so in the foreseeable future.
It’s hard to say, where WhatsApp is really going to (how they want to make money), and why to prevent non-phones to get involved.
I think, for the time being, I am going to start WhatsApp only on demand.
In theory using “a general XMPP client” is superior over using separate dedicated ones. But WTF why do people use WhatsApp? They don’t need to enter passwords, they don’t need to find and add their contacts, as their contacts are simply identified by their mobile phone number. Enough “pros”? Not that I really suggest WhatsApp because of these reasons.
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