How Telegram is Scoring Over WhatsApp

Telegram offers fast, secure, and synced messaging across all your devices. The free, end-to-end encrypted platform is relying on features like supergroup chats, increased limits for sending files, and self-destructing messages to pip WhatsApp to the messaging post.

WhatsApp may be synonymous with sending text messages, videos, and other files, but Telegram Messenger is slowly but steadily making a mark.

The cloud-based instant messaging and voice-over IP service is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and GNU/Linux, and lets you send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio and files of any size & type.

According to App Annie Intelligence, Telegram was among the top 10 most downloaded and most used apps worldwide in Q2 2020, and jumped to 8th spot in the same period from 11th earlier. Telegram on Android has more than 500 million installs and a rating of 4.4 stars ratings.

Though the app has been around since 2013 for about 7 years (it'll turn 7 on August 14), not many people realised it's worth, until this pandemic and lockdowns, mainly for the features, namely Supergroup, Channels and File Transfer upto ~ 2 GB. I've been there around, using the app from 2013 and happy to see that it's growing.

So should you or shouldn't you download Telegram Messenger?

The answer is you obviously should, because it provides privacy, ease of use, wonderful features and anonymity at one place.

Getting started

After you download the app, create an account using your phone number, similar to WhatsApp. The app asks you for a call log access for a quick call-based verification (if it's able to identify that the entered number and the SIM number is the same (at least that's what happened to me). Put in your name and a profile photo – if you wish – on the next page. You will need to allow the app access to your contact list to see people in your network who are using Telegram.

Wonderful Features

The working of Telegram Messenger is somewhat similar to WhatsApp – the chat interface, chatting, starting a new group, checking ‘last seen’ for the user etc.

But, after you explore the whole app, without leaving anything you'll realise that Telegram has many more features that promise a (ultra) superior user experience.

Other wondeful features include Groups/Supergroups (supporting up to 200,000 members per (supergroup), Channels (lets you broadcast messages to an unlimited number of Telegram users), and Instant View (lets you view articles with zero loading time and also without ADs). It also offers Telegram Passport, an highly encrypted way to store your identity documents on Telegram servers. Also, there are two types in Channels and Groups - Private Channels and Public Channels. Public Channels have usernames and private channels have invite link.

Users keen to declutter their inbox can try the new switch in Privacy & Security settings (called Archive & Mute) to automatically archive and mute new chats from people not in their contacts. They can access these chats at any time from the Archive folder, and bring them back to the main chat with in a tap. Note: This feature is controlled by the server and it depends on when you'll see this. This feature comes handy for people owing popular usernames, group admins/owners and others. I've attached screenshots of how it happens.

Then there comes Folders, being one of the most loved and best feature, yet. You can create folders for Work, Family and Unread, Channels and so on. At a time when the phone does not stop buzzing, the folder feature helps declutter your virtual life. During work-from-home, this feature came handy to many people, as they were able to declutter things and ignore other chats and increase their productivity.

Telegram has a VoIP call (voice over internet protocol) feature and video calls are in the work. It has been launched as Experimental Feature for iOS users. I'll give the reason too: 1. Less device variation (just few devices) compare to tens of thousands of Android devices and add customized androids like MIUI and etc, which have their own challenges and create bugs in very optimistic way. So tackling that much device variation takes time and careful implementation.

2. Less iOS users of Telegram, so it makes it easier to test some features, while on Android Beta, anyone can download the apk and for example start video calling and jam the servers at once or it could impede the development process.

Security Advantage

Cloud-based Telegram claims that it prioritises security and speed, marrying WhatApp’s swiftness with Snapchat’s transience. When I tested, these claims were true.

The app says all activities, including chats, groups and media shared, are encrypted and cannot be viewed without being deciphered first. Messages can also be edited after they are sent (48 hrs limit), which can often be a boon.

You can receive notifications for screenshots taken – something that few love. You can also create a password for individual secret chats that you wish to keep private (applicable in Telegram X for now).

Multimedia Features

Telegram lets users upload a video as their profile media instead of the regular “DP”. They can even edit and enhance the profile photo/video, as the app provides a built-in editor. Also, with the latest update (6.3.0 | 2042), you can set any of your Profile Media as main for anyone when they see your Display Picture (but when you set an old profile picture/video as main, everyone can see the main one, but for you, the latest one will be showed in settings.

A mini-thumbnail feature in the chat list gives an idea of what media has been sent in a message and lets you decide if you want to download or not. The highlight of media sharing in Telegram is that you can share files of up to 2 GB on the platform as compared to 100 MB on WhatsApp and 16 MB media.

Group Stats, Channel Stats & More

Source: Telegram Blog

The Owners/Admins of large groups (over 500 members) can view beautiful group stats. It displays detailed graphs regarding their activity and growth. These stats offer a list of top members and admins by number of messages and average message length. The parameters considered include growth of the group, members who joined or left in a given time frame, source of new members, languages used, content format used (text, links, photo, videos, etc.), top days and hours, top members and admins, etc. These same features are also available to any channel owner admin for over 500 members.

You get additional settings in groups to control who can post messages, media and other things. The owner can also control the permissions of admins precisely. The app is planning to launch this feature to channels and groups having more than 100 members in the near future.

Final Verdict

Telegram is packed with so many features that many users find it overwhelming.

These, including the ability to create a channel to broadcast a message, ability to send uncompressed media, granular notification management, themes, live location sharing, secret messages, focus on multimedia, and capability to download heavy files, puts it way ahead of other messaging apps.

At the time of writing, there are still many features to be unearthed and it's capabilities. But there’s something the app needs: a video calling feature which is soon rolling out. There are rumours that the Development Team is planning something magnanimous as Telegram turns 7 in the next month on 14th August. For more pin-pointed features, you can refer the Telegram Evolution page.

Amid the many pros, one con stands out: the limited user base. WhatsApp currently has 1.6 billion active users compared to Telegram’s more than 400 million monthly active users. But this shouldn't actually matter because there are many people who are joining Telegram recently (I've kept Contact Joined Telegram purposely on). Someday, Telegram will close the gap and then turn out to be the most used Messenger, for they say, The Wheel turns only once. If the wheel is down, it has to and it will reach the pinnacle of success.

Stop using Whatsapp that doesn't care about your storage, but use a cloud-based service as Telegram. One of the 700 very bad things of WhatsApp is, when restore backup, ALL that media (possibly GBs) is taken immediately from your device internal storage! Also each time you forward something, it gets duplicated. There's no solution for this without losing chats and media. How does Telegram work? It downloads messages and media from the cloud when you need it (scrolling up, searching old messages BY DATE, so on). You can also choose to delete that media from your device (not to run out of storage) but everything is available to re-download when needed. Yes, it's wonderful. Why we all use WhatsApp? A mystery (I actually know). Start switching your buddies to Telegram and you'll get that and 400 more incredible features :)

I really appreciate the app by Mr. Pavel and Nikolai which have helped many people, in many great ways. Thanks for reading.

© Adarsh Gupta

All illustrations are the copyright and trademark (except Archive and Mute images) are the property of Telegram Messenger LLP and are taken from their blog.