There’s a new app that’s trending in the App Store and Play Store and lets you chat even without an Internet connection. Meet FireChat—the new way to communicate with friends and family nearby.
For it to work without being online, FireChat makes use of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas to ping nearby devices and create a peer-to-peer network. Anyone within a 30-foot range can be interacted with in the Nearby tab of the app. There they can send simple text messages and photos. If users do happen to have Internet access, there’s also the Everyone tab for them to communicate with everyone all around the globe. Talk about information overload.
Like Whisper, Secret, and Banter, the FireChat app also implements a level of social anonymity. Initial setups and logging in thru the traditional username/password combo are not present here. Instead, users can enter conversations right away after creating a username.
If you want to give FireChat a try, head to the download links below. Reviews deem it rather lacking and too minimalistic for general use (e.g., no option to filter out annoying users and no sound notification for incoming messages), but it does work as advertised.