Monthly Archives: February 2014

Better Ways to Text

You’ve got a smartphone. Your data plan may include unlimited texting. In my house, that’s a GoodThing(tm) because I’d be broke if I had to pay for my kids’ texts. To wit, from our most recent bill, I sent 153 SMS messages. My wife sent 57, my daughter sent 184 and my son sent 3,046! I think his thumb is stuck to his phone’s screen.

My smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S3, has a pretty large screen. Not the largest you can get, but easy enough on my eyes and fingers. I also have a Google Nexus 10 tablet (made for Google by Samsung) with an external keyboard. I’ve been using Gmail and Google Calendar for years. I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I could no longer have the instantly updated view no matter where I look (phone, tablet, desktop, laptop, library, hotel kiosk, wherever). Because of this integration, and frankly, because I’m lazy – I don’t want to pull my phone out to deal with  a SMS text message if I’m working with my tablet – I’ve been looking for a SMS text app for my tablet that can use my smartphone’s number.

This week, I found Mighty Text. Its available in the Google Play store. No, I don’t get a commission if you click the links, I’m providing them because I think you’ll like this app. Anyway, install it on your phone and create an account. By default, it will link to your phone’s Google account, which is probably you@gmail.com. Then, install it on your tablet and link it to the same account. If you want, install a browser add-in to your desktop or laptop and link it to the same account for seamless integration across the platforms.

The app claims “instant notification” to your tablet or desktop when your phone receives a SMS text message. I don’t know about instant, but I can tell you that the incoming message popup is visible on my tablet BEFORE I hear the notificaiton sound associated with the incoming message on my phone. Incoming and outgoing messages are visible on all linked platforms.

So, have you been looking for an app like this? If so, try MightyText and let me know what you think. Do you know of other apps that can do this? Please share, especially if you look at MightyText and think you’ve got something better!

Note that I’ve updated my Smartphone Apps list to include the MightyText and GoSMS Pro applications.