App review: Home-grown Hike Messenger is big on features

The Hike app makes conversations and moments much more creative, fun and exciting

When it comes to instant messengers (IM), now there are many options available, and every app has something unique to offer.

But, Hike Messenger seems to stand out among the newer breed of IMs. India's first fully home-grown messenger app, Hike could prove a truly worthy challenger to the mighty WhatsApp. 

Hike has lately come up with some major updates and refinement that not only make the app stable but also move it up the ladder as one of the IM apps that could do the job of a messenger and also throw in some really exciting features to make conversations much more fun.

The app does quite well in what it is primarily meant to do -- sending and receiving messages -- but the fun lies in how it does that and the other features it offers for making conversations and moments much more creative  and exciting.
 

Let’s look at each of these exciting features:

Stories, Camera and Live Filters

Every picture speaks a thousand words. That's true, indeed. The ‘stories’ feature of Hike allows you to click a picture and superimpose text or stickers on it. The best part is that the picture stays to be viewed for 48 hours before it goes away. This way, the moments are captured, shared and new memories or stories can be created every day.

For convenience, Hike features an in-built camera app that allows instant moments to be captured before they are edited using live filters. You might like to swap your face with actor Ranveer Singh's or with Prime Minister Narendra Modi! 

Video Calling

Video calling through IM apps is not a new feature anymore. But Hike messenger seems to deliver big on one of the major pain points that India faces -- slow internet speed. The video calling feature can be activated on a single tap and it actually offers good video quality even on 2G speeds. It may at times struggle to connect, especially on 2G networks, but it works well generally.

Also, the app features live caller preview, which allows the receiver to view a live preview of the caller, in video, before answering the call. The feature is quite neat and shows how good execution of thoughts that might have gone into the development of the app.

Video Stories

As the name suggests, the video stories feature allows users to capture a clip of 20 seconds, annotate it with text, mix it with some cool live filters, use stickers for some drama, and post it. Just like picture stories, the video stories stay up for 48 hours before they go off. 

With all these features, other than basic IM ones, the Hike messaging app is becoming very popular among users. Those already using the app would agree that the app is real fun. For those who have still not tried Hike, we recommend they download the app on their Android, iOS, or Windows smartphones and experience the difference.