Remember the days before cell phones when you called your best friend, who also happened to be your next-door neighbor, on a good old fashioned Walkie-Talkie? The only thing that stood in your way in planning to take over the neighborhood playground for an all-out water balloon war was battery life (nothing has changed there) and interference (reception still sucks, thanks AT&T).
The nice folks over at HeyTell took all the great things about Walkie-Talkies and turned them into a rather useful app for those of us wishing for simpler times. With HeyTell, you don’t have to waste five minutes trying to find that perfect spot in your house where your call won’t drop. Instead, record a message, and send it. Essentially, HeyTell offers instant voice messaging at its finest. Find out more after the jump.
Hey! It’s Time to HeyTell
After downloading the app, you are asked to select yourself from your contact list. Easy enough, right? Well, I wasn’t in my own contact list (weird) so I had to go ahead and add myself.
Next choose your victim, err … friend in your contacts list either by typing it in the search box or opening up your address book. After selecting the contact, an invitation to join your HeyTell network will pop up in an email interface. When they accept, HeyTell will automatically add them to your “Friends” tab in your contacts list, making it exceedingly easy to determine who is available to chat.
The default home page shows recent conversations and links to contact list and HeyTell friends list
HeyTell’s design is very user-friendly, with its big, orange “Hold and Speak” button taking up the bottom 1/4 of the screen. The app is sleek with no clutter, enabling the user to get down to business without fussing with settings.
The “Recent Conversations” message center reads like a typical voicemail inbox with date/time under the sender or recipient’s name and a disclosure indicator to open up a screen showing all conversations with the particular individual, which are saved and can be played when offline.
When you receive a new message, a push notification will be sent, or if you are already in the app, the message will play automatically (which has led to some interesting sideways glances when in public). And while you can’t email voice messages that you have received, you can email your own recorded pearls of wisdom. This feature is highly useful when needing a quick way to record notes and thoughts that need to be emailed to a particular group of people.
HeyTell offers geo-locating between friends
In addition to offering an easy way to connect without being dependent on the temperamental service zones, HeyTell allows the user to use geo-locating to see where their friend is currently located. (This would have made strategic positioning so much easier in our annual capture the flag.) While neat, this feature isn’t absolutely necessary, and personally, I often have it turned off.
Hey, What Are These Extras For?
While the app is free, the extras are not.
Extras include the ability to decorate your HeyTell name with Emoji icons, change your voice with their aptly named “Voice Changer,” wipe messages automatically from HeyTell, and “Group Broadcast,” which out of all the extras, I believe to be the most valuable. With “Group Broadcast” users are able to create two different kinds of groups of up to 25 friends. One is more like a giant chatroom, and the other utilizes a broadcast method, where messages can be sent to large groups.
How Does HeyTell Compete?
There are a few alternatives to HeyTell on the market, but honestly, I think this is the best investment (as in free) for the easy-to-use basic functionality of a “push-to-talk” app. Two similar apps are CloudTalk and TalkBox, which offer video and photo sharing in addition to instant voice messaging. While these features are handy, I honestly love the simplicity and single-minded reliability of HeyTell.
That’s the End, My HeyTell Friends
Released last year in February and marketed as a social networking app by Voxilate, HeyTell provides a free cross-platform, easy-to-use alternative to voicemails and text messages for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android.
The easy-to-use design makes this app perfect to use in a day-to-day basis, such as when you are creating a shopping list for your significant other, making your friends jealous with the awesome acoustics at a live show, or carrying on a conversation while in the middle of doing other activities. It is also more reliable (at least in San Francisco) than phone calls when on the move through dreaded “drop zones.”
Overall, I think this app is perfect for anyone who wants a playful and easy-to-use voice messenger in their app arsenal.
Focusing on their target goal, which is to provide free push-to-talk functionality, HeyTell has hit the nail on the head. HeyTell is reminiscent of childhood antics and has helped me out a number of times when I don’t have service and don’t have time to type out a fully-fledged conversation. The app could only be improved if they offer more opportunities for users to share videos and photos and integrating social networking.