You can now call relatives abroad and send photos home from holiday without paying a penny. Barry Collins reveals how to stay in touch for free
Mobile phones have certainly made it easier to keep in touch with family or friends around the world, but not necessarily less expensive. Likewise, phoning home from abroad can be a very pricey business, with roaming charges and mobile-data fees landing you huge unexpected bills.
That’s all changing now, thanks to free calling and messaging apps that use Wi-Fi, rather than gobble into your mobile contract or pay-as-you-go SIM card. Using Wi-Fi on a phone or tablet is no more expensive than using it on your PC - you simply connect your device to your home broadband, or public Wi-Fi if you're travelling.
Phone anywhere in the world for free
‘Skype for Mobile’ (www.snipca.com/16212) is the best tool for making free audio and video calls from your phone or tablet, just like the PC version. It has apps for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. You can use it to call anyone in the world for free, as long as they have Skype installed (PC or mobile).
The Skype app also lets you call phone numbers, but this isn’t free. Rates vary, but are usually lower than landline rates and certainly lower than roaming mobile rates (www.skype.com/en/rates).
The main problem with Skype is that many hotels block it on their Wi-Fi network in an attempt to force you to use their expensive phone service instead. So it may not work if you or the person you’re calling is on holiday.
As an alternative, try the new calls function in WhatsApp Messenger (Android www.snipca.com/16223; iOS www.snipca.com/16224). Like Skype, WhatsApp works via the internet, so it won’t eat into your call allowance. Calls are completely free as long as your access to the internet is free. You and your contact will both need to have the app installed. Once you’ve added each other as contacts, you call them by tapping their name, then the handset icon.
At present, WhatsApp’s calling function seems to be suffering a few teething troubles. When we tried it, our own voice echoed back to us, and at times only one of us could hear the other. This needs fixing before it can be a serious alternative to Skype. Also note that while WhatsApp is free for your first year, it costs 69p per year after that (though this is a tiny amount for such a potentially great service).
There’s already an excellent free calls tool on iOS, FaceTime (www.snipca.com/16214). Like Skype, FaceTime lets you make video calls as well as voice calls. Bear in mind, video calls use far more bandwidth than voice calls, so if one of you is on holiday and using a hotel’s weak Wi-Fi network, you may want to stick with audio-only (tap the phone icon) rather than video (tap the camera icon). Both users will need to be using an iOS device and have FaceTime enabled.
Send text messages for free
Most mobile-phone contracts include hundreds of free SMS text messages, using your provider’s own messaging service. But as soon as those texts start crossing borders, they cost a lot more to send - and even to receive.
Happily, there’s no reason to pay for these if you’ve got a Wi-Fi connection. WhatsApp lets you send unlimited text messages to individuals or groups, and it handily places two little blue ticks alongside sent messages to indicate when they’ve been read.
Apple’s Messages app (www.snipca.com/16225) lets you send text messages to other iPhone users for free over Wi-Fi, but will fall back on traditional SMS when you’re out of Wi-Fi range, or if the person you’re messaging isn’t on iOS. The text-message bubble will go blue if the other user’s on iMessage (free) or green if it’s going via SMS (paid for), so you can see which messages will cost you.
Send photos and videos for free
WhatsApp may need to knock its calling function into shape, but it’s brilliant for quickly sharing photos and videos. Simply start or open a conversation with a contact (or a group of them), then tap the paper clip icon at the top of the screen and choose a photo or video from your device. You can add captions to photos and trim videos before sending. All photos and videos are compressed so they shoot off quickly and don’t take up much bandwidth or mobile data. To scroll through all the photos and videos you’ve sent and received in a conversation, tap the three dots at the top-right, then tap Media.
Skype lets you share uncompressed (full-size) photos and videos, but it’s more of a hassle than with WhatsApp. It’s better to send a link to the full-size photo or video that you’ve stored online, using a secure storage app such as Dropbox (Android www.snipca.com/16228; iOS www.snipca.com/16229). The app is free and gives you 2GB of free storage space.
Dropbox has a Camera Upload option that automatically uploads to Dropbox any photos or videos you take using that device whenever you’re in Wi-Fi range (unless your battery is at less than 30 per cent). Turn on Camera Upload in the app’s settings. To send (‘share’) a photo or video from Dropbox, tap the relevant item, then the Share icon below it and choose how to share it (for example, by copying the link and then pasting it into a message).
Send documents and birthday cards
Free app Pushbullet (Android www.snipca.com/16233; iOS www.snipca.com/16234) is also great for sending photos - and much more besides. It lets you instantly send documents (urgent travel documents, for example), messages and links to web pages to anyone who also has a free Pushbullet account. Creating an account is easy, and you can even do this using your Google or Facebook account. The app lets you access all your sent and received files securely online (www.pushbullet.com).
If you’d rather send a physical postcard or greetings card to or from overseas, have a look at Touchnote (Android www.snipca.com/16235; iOS www.snipca.com/16236). The app is free but the cards aren’t: they cost a reasonable £1.99, including postage. You can use your own photos to create the cards, and add a personal message. The app even has a built-in secure address book, so you can store all your friends’ and family members’ contact details and access them instantly when you need to send them a birthday card.