What's Wrong with WhatsApp Message Tunneling
A colleague asked me on Twitter what the problems do I have with the way WhatsApp tunnels all the messages though my phone:
@raindev_: I'm tired of WhatsApp tunneling all the messages through my phone. Time to look for an alternative?
@JensRantil: Also, what part about the tunneling do you find annoying? Very rarely don't I have my phone on same Wi-Fi as computer.
The answer turned out to be too long for Twitter so I decided to write a short post.
Just to clarify: it's not required for the phone to be on the same Wi-Fi network, being connected to the Internet is enough.
While that's true that most of the time my phone is connected, I have a few issue with this approach.
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I doesn't work truly reliably. Sometimes I need to wake up my phone to connect/reconnect to WhatsApp from the desktop.
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It drains phone battery unnecessarily. Especially if I'm connected to WhatsApp the whole day, e.g. at an office. While the impact may not be huge really, I don't see a reason to sacrifice part of already scarce phone battery life.
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My phone isn't really always connected. I don't want to fall offline if I forgot a charger/to charge/or my phone altogether. Made worse by the fact that I need to scan a barcode from the phone to connect which is awkward to do remotely.
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Because all the messages have to be tunneled though my specific device, I can't use WhatsApp on two different phones at the same time. Yes, I do use two phones regularly.
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If phone is offline, there's no access to old messages as all of them are stored on the phone only.
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Also, while not directly caused by the tunneling, but tied together with the decision to do authentication by phone number: impossible to log out a device remotely, I'd better not loose my phone; lack of iPad app, is probably a result of the same decision line.
While all of the issues above are not critical (in fact I've used WhatsApp as my main messenger successfully for more than a year), they makes me look at alternatives time to time (the current contender is Wire).