SMS Chat in Gmail – Send Free Messages Without Internet Connection

Google has silently launched their free SMS service in India. Earlier in March 2012, Google has introduced their SMS chat in Gmail, where a Google Talk widget will appear in your Gmail account. So when you chat with someone, you can save their phone numbers in address book and send a SMS if needed. This free service will allow the user to send a instant message to his him/her friend. Its just like a instant chat messenger, where you can chat with the other person. But the person has to reply to continue the chat further more. Months ago, this service was launched all over U.S and was pretty successful. The best part of this service is, whenever you don’t have access to Internet, you can ask your friend to chat via Gmail SMS service. This will save your money, bandwidth and can also save your time by sending a direct message to their phone directly. Google has a full fledged version of  SMS chat in Gmail, for the first time today.

Today we were  pretty much surprised with sudden notification from Gmail. It says, Now you can send instant SMS to your friends anytime, anywhere. So digging more into details, You can find SMS chat in Gmail service restricted to only few supported handful mobile operators. Some of them are, Aircel, Idea, Loop Mobile, MTS, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo, Tata indicom, Vodafone (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal. & Assam, other North East areas)

How to Start a SMS Chat in Gmail:

You can send a message to any person you wanted to. But make sure they are already present in your Gmail chat list earlier. You can follow these simple steps to use this free SMS chat in Gmail service. So here we go,

Step 1: Login to your Gmail account and look at the Google Talk widget.

Step 2: Select a person you wanted to chat with, and click on Send Text (SMS) option.

Step 3: In this above screenshot, i have selected my friend Vishal Arya as the person whom i want to chat with. So click on Send Text (SMS) service to save his mobile number.

Step 4: Here we are saving 9000000000 as vishal arya phone number. So when ever you send him a message via SMS chat in gmail, it will directly reach his mobile phone as an SMS.

Step 5: Click on Save and now you can send a free SMS to your friend. Here we are sending a direct SMS to Arya phone, via Gmail. I have sent a SMS saying Hello, which will be replied from his mobile number. Since this number is not a valid number, you cannot expect any reply from him.

Google has mentioned few terms of conditions and guide lines for using this free SMS chat in Gmail service. They have also mentioned few tips and techniques to make the best out of this free service. Its very much important to understand these guidelines before proceeding further. Few of them are,

1. You are restricted to use only 50 credits per day.
2. Each message you send will burn 1 credit from your daily quota of 50 credits. And each message you receive as a reply will get you 5 credits with maximum up to 50 a day.
3. You cannot buy additional credits for sending more messages, but surely you can send a message to your own mobile and reply back to get additional credits.
4. You can use commands like BLOCK, UNBLOCK, START, STOP and other commands to restrict people sending you bulk messages.
5. If your credits are decreased to zero, they will be charged again to 50 in next 24 hours.
6. If you are sending too many messages without any reply from other side, you might be blocked due to privacy issues.
7. Also sending mass messages may ban you for ever. This is to avoid abuses and hatred in chat messages.
8. You can use STOP command to block all messages from any Gmail user. For this you need to send a message to mobile operator, and enter the System message number to activate the service asap.
9. You can even chat with your friends who has no Internet connection.
10. Limited to only few mobile operators as of now.

Guess you are now aware of all TOC mentioned by Google SMS chat in Gmail. I hope you all are ready to understand these above guidelines and send free SMS to your friends. Please drop us a line on what you think about this amazing service.