Samsung ChatON gets SMS and MMS integration

Samsung’s ChatON has become the latest app to get support for SMS and MMS on the Android platform. With a new update, Samsung ChatON users will be able to see their phone’s native messaging combined with ChatON messages now.

This update bumps Samsung ChatON to version 3.2.115 and brings SMS and MMS functionality to the app mainly. The app’s users in Germany and Brazil will even see contacts on ChatON buddy list in addition to a combined stream for messages and chat. There is also a new badge indicating the number of unread messages on the ChatON icon now.

Another contender for the default SMS app

As far as the update in relation to Android tablets go, there is now a new UI design for Samsung ChatON. You will also be able to change the background of “My page” and upload multimedia contents such as images, videos and location information on PostON.

Samsung ChatON is not the first cross-platform messaging app to integrate SMS and MMS functionality onto it on Android. With the impending release of an Android update – the 4.4 KitKat – Google released an update for Hangouts that allowed users to send and receive SMS and MMS messages within the application. This essentially meant that the native messaging app could be completely replaced by Hangouts. Facebook too added to Messenger the ability to read SMS and MMS messages over the past year.

It isn’t surprising that Samsung added the ability to receive and send SMS and MMS messages to ChatON. The cross-platform messaging app may bear the Samsung stamp but is downloadable on any phone running Android version 4.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and up. With Google now allowing any app to officially replace the native one to read SMS messages, ChatON could garner more users this way.

You can download Samsung ChatON for Android from the Google Play Store.