[Anupam]

I have WhatsApp on my phone, and most of my friends have it, and it's quite popular here in India, and therefore it's my main app for messaging.

I have used WeChat before, and it has good features too, but very few of my friends use it. Also, it's a bit heavy on the phone. If you want to find new people to chat with, then WeChat is good in that respect.. it shows you people using WeChat around your area, and also there is a shake feature which shows people using that feature currently. You can even use video chat with WeChat. However, as very few friends used it, I had to uninstall it.

Surprisingly Kik is not in the list. Kik is also quite a popular app in some countries, and is specially popular with the younger generation. I have it on my phone, although only two of my friends use it, but they are from outside India, and therefore I have it on my phone just to keep in touch with them. I like Kik. It is simple and has a good interface.

I had tried Viber too, but I didn't keep it long on my phone. Again, very few friends used it, and also, I have a problem with my network which interferes with proper audio or video communication. Since Viber is used mainly for audio chat, and that wasn't working so well, I had to uninstall it. Viber has a desktop version too, which they developed recently. So, in that respect it's good. It can be a good Skype alternative.

I never used Facebook Messenger, and don't have any intention of using it either. I had the Facebook app previously on my phone, and it was a resource hog. Even when I was signed out, it remained in memory, and kept coming back even after repeated killing. I have no interest in Facebook on my phone therefore.

I like Telegram, and it is open source and with regards to privacy it's good. I had installed it on my phone after reading IO.Hazard's article. But again, none of my friends use it, and also, for my low end phone with 512 MB RAM with Gingerbread, it's a bit too much to keep. So, I uninstalled it today.
I would like to see Telegram get more popular. However, I do hope they change the interface, because it looks like WhatsApp presently.
I do think that Telegram should rise in popularity slowly, mainly because of it being open source, free without ads, and also in terms of security and privacy, it's quite good, which is an important thing nowadays.