On the plus side, the real phone-number approach does make account setup easy, and it means the app can find contacts on the phone. With Kik, Skype, or Facebook Messenger, you simply use your account username, avoiding those pitfalls. It also means you'll have to create a new Viber account if you get a new phone number. There are two concerns with this: you're giving out a private personal detail that links to your financial, personal, and contact data to a startup tech company and any Viber contacts can see your real number. Like WhatsApp, Viber is one of those services that require your actual phone number and uses that as your identifier. If the answer is No, you're told that you must have the app installed on your smart phone. Next, you're asked if you have Viber on your mobile phone. The first thing you see after installation is the message bar asking you to allow the app access to your webcam and microphone-fair enough, for a communication app. Viber apps are available for just about every mobile platform you can think of (and some you can't): iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Windows, Mac, Symbian, Nokia S40 and Bada. I tested on both a desktop PC and a Surface RT tablet. It works on both Windows 8.1 x86 and Windows RT ARM-based tablets. Installing and Signing Up You get the free Viber app by downloading it from the Windows Store. Let's take the app for a spin and see how well Viber works at what it can do.
It doesn't, however, replace Apple FaceTime or Skype's similar video capabilities. Giving you the same messaging system and ID on your phone, tablet, and PC means Viber is in effect a cross-platform version of iMessage, which is restricted to Apple devices. The Windows 8.1 Viber app (free) is its latest incarnation, having landed in the last month of 2013.
Viber doesn't add a whole lot to the Skype model, actually lacking several of the bigger player's major features, but it's a well designed and economical way to send text messages and place VoIP calls. First there was email, then instant messaging, then Skype, then WhatsApp, then Facebook Messenger, and on and on. Every few years, there's a newer, hotter way to communicate with your friends and colleagues.
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