Hike Messenger has released version 4.0 of its app, bringing a range of new upgrades to the popular messaging tool. It’s now optimized for both spotty data connectivity as well as high-speed 4G networks.
The company claims the Hike Messenger is now 5 times faster than its previous version and is designed to work with low-end phones and in extremely poor network environments. The brand said in a statement that the changes have been made to make the app more accessible to the millions of Indians experiencing Internet connectivity for the first time.
Other improvements come in the form of photo filters and a ‘Sticker Suggestions’ feature which suggests emoticons as the user types a message. Also on board is the ability to add up to 500 people in a single group chat. Managing such a huge gathering would probably be very demanding on one person, so Hike has introduced the option to have multiple admins running a group.
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Keeping the speed of 4G networks in mind, the messaging app now lets consumers send files such as PDFs, documents and Zips up till 100MB in size. It further runs a news bulletin service which sends bite-sized information under a 100 characters. According to Hike, the initiative already had 1 million active daily users within 24 hours of its launch.
The chat application now boasts of having 20 billion messages exchanged every month, double the quantity it traded back in August of last year. Kavin Bharti Mittal, Hike’s CEO, said the company had spent over 6 months developing the new version of the tool and would release one big update every month on top of the current one until the end of the year.
Hike Messenger version 4.0 is live now for the Android platform and can be downloaded via the Google Play Store. iOS users will have to wait for another week to try it out.