iPod Touch: How to text message (or free texting for your iPhone)
By Danny Mendez
Even with the lack of phone hardware, the iPod Touch is a miraculous mini computer which can save you tons of money should you use it wisely. Here’s a money saver: use your iPod Touch to send free text messages.
There’s a few methods of doing this, but the easiest and most convenient requires an AOL instant messaging account. We know lots of you already have one, and, if you don’t, perhaps this willll finally be the reason to dive in.
On your iPod Touch and through Beejive or Meebo, two great instant messaging web apps, log into your AIM account (by the way, thanks to Evalocity7 for the idea). Add a buddy to your account and under buddy, enter “+1″ followed by the person’s cellphone area code and number. Under nickname, enter something like “Dan’s Cell”.
So if Dan’s cell is (555) 444-3333, you’d enter “+15554443333″ for “Buddy”, and “Dan’s Cell” for “Nick Name”.
The recipient will receive a message similar to the following:
“j0hnDOE: (Using AOL IM)
My iPod Touch can do everything!
(You can Reply to this message)”
If the recipient happens to respond, their response will be sent to your AIM account, which should still be open on your iPod Touch.
Evalocity7 fails to point out four things. First, it is much easier to set this up using a regular computer. You don’t necessarily have to do it through your iPod Touch or iPhone. Second, it’s probably easier to to use a native instant messaging app such as Apollo IM, but that requires you to hack your unit. Third, the iPod Touch’s wifi antenna shuts off when it goes to sleep, so make sure to delay auto-sleep through settings. Finally, this is makes more sense for the iPhone than the iPod Touch.
The iPhone can keep an always on EDGE data connection as opposed to the iPod Touch, which needs a wifi connection to connect to the Internet. As a result, you can keep your AIM account always on through Apollo IM and use it to send/receive text messages instead of getting owned by AT&T with expensive texting fees.
That’s not to say this couldn’t fit the needs of any iPod Touch users out there, but some people need a consistent and always-on method of sending and receiving texts. For those of us that aren’t text monsters, this could definitely fit the bill.
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December 28th, 2007
[…] Original post by IPHONETOUCH.BLORGE.com […]
December 28th, 2007
That is an interesting work-around for those folks that are addicted to texting. I agree that the dependence on a wifi connection severely handicaps this method, however.
December 30th, 2007
what do you do if you put in someones cell and there offline and yes ive typed it in right and yes there phone is on
January 8th, 2008
im from new zealand. will this work with my countries mobile fones? how how i do my number? my country code is +64 and my number in my country with out the country code is 0212509365 so would i write is +1+64212509365 or +164212509365? or what??
plz help
January 15th, 2008
DO NOT DO THIS IT charges you for every message sent and recieved i got fucked!!!!
January 17th, 2008
how can it charge you? were you using an iphone? if so, no shit it charged you, it’s still sending data and you’re probably using your EVDO, not wifi. it’s meant for ipod touch over wifi, theres no possible way you can get charged using an iT over wifi.
January 30th, 2008
this didn’t work; I could send the message but I couldn’t receive. There was even a little message that said (your IM has been sent to my cell phone and though I can read your message, i cannot reply) using JiveTalk and Meebo
anyone get anything different?
February 5th, 2008
same as DL, was able to send the message but phone did not get it(i used beejive)
March 30th, 2008
does the recipient of the txt get charged