Loren Brichter – the developer behind the soon-to-be-official Twitter iPhone app – has teamed up with the guys behind Borange to build Textie, a new iPhone app that effectively replaces SMS and MMS (in-app photos only).
The iPhone application, which is also iPad-friendly, is available now and offers users a free way to send text and photo messages to friends. Users can download the app for free and upgrade in-app for $1.99 should they wish to remove ads.
Textie is similar in function to TextPlus‘s popular free texting app, but it comes with a few key distinctions: app-to-e-mail or SMS support (and vice versa), the ability to send and receive photo messages and an aesthetically pleasing UI characteristic of Brichter’s style.
Users can send SMS messages to friends by selecting a contact’s e-mail address or mobile number from their iPhone address books. If the contact in question is already a Textie member, the message will be relayed to their app (and they’ll receive an optional push notification). If the contact is not a member, the contact will either receive the message as an e-mail or a standard text message. In both scenarios, the contact’s reply via e-mail or SMS will be instantly rerouted back to the sender’s conversation in the app.
In trial runs, Textie proved to be clean, fast and user-friendly, though the in-conversation ads in the free version were somewhat distracting to the overall experience.
While Textie is pretty late to this space, we have to imagine that the app will get traction simply because of its creators’ proven iPhone prowess and Brichter’s affiliation with Twitter.
