With WhatsApp leading the pack, the app market seems to be spinning out messaging apps on a daily basis, and while some of these do stand out with their unique features, most others fail to impress. RingID is yet another app that wants to bring people closer, but it seems to derive its inspiration from a completely different ideology. I have been using the app extensively for the last few weeks, and it has fared impressively.
While the RingID boasts of quite a lot of new features, the deal maker for me was the ability to place voice and video calls over a congested, sluggish network and also low-speed connectivity. The app comes with a menu head that would allow you to navigate between Home, dial pad, contacts, call history and messages.
Cranking it up
Getting on board is pretty easy with an OTP verification setup; however, once the initial setup is done, things can get a bit crazy. Unlike WhatsApp, it doesn’t scan your contacts automatically and instead needs one of the parties to send a request and another to accept. Adding to the confusion is the Ring ID itself, which is an eight-digit number. Swiping right will give access to the left menu pane, which mostly highlights the Social features of the app along with the Account Settings, General Settings, and File Transfer toggle.
Plus, clicking on the huge green “Online” button will let you change your status to offline, but this, however, will mean that you won’t be able to receive any sort of notifications and updates. Swiping from left to right will reveal yet another menu pane that enlists the features you can only use in the future!
Call and Video Quality
Skype has been unnecessarily moody for my taste. While it does serve the purpose, it rather struggles to do so. WhatsApp, on the other hand, also wimps when being connected to the cellular network (Beware, my LTE Speeds hover around a little shy of 2Mbps!). Moreover, the call quality didn’t deteriorate even after a prolonged duration of the conversation.
In order to push the envelope further, I tested the app at 2G speeds, and although the call quality had come down a notch or two, it was still remarkable. The video calling experience was not bad either, but the drop in Internet speeds gave way to choppy frames and a delay in voice relay. That being said, the video call quality was at its best when the connection speed exceeded at least 2Mbps.
Downside
Even after trying to nit-pick about this app, all I could find were a few downsides that could be overcome by a simple update. The social bit in this app somehow seemed unnecessary, adding to that the music and video curations were empty. As I expressed earlier, it takes some time to get used to Ring ID. Another letdown is the number scanning system, and I wished that the RingID scanned numbers from the contacts automatically and displayed the ones already using the RingID app.
Bottomline
We have used Skype, WhatsApp, WeChat, and a slew of other messaging apps, but RingID takes the cake when it comes to high-quality calls on low bandwidth. If it is pure texting you are looking for, RingID might fall short of your expectations. If it is audio calls or video calls, then the app is undoubtedly one of the best around. But is that enough to lure all your friends and family away from WhatsApp and WeChat? Give RingID a spin and let us know what you think about this app.
Mahit Huilgol is a Mechanical Engineering graduate and is a Technology and Automobile aficionado. He ditched the Corporate boardroom wars in favor of technology...