Telegram has a lot of features that WhatsApp doesn’t have.
I’m not here to diss on WhatsApp. Really. But I honestly wish WhatsApp would have at least some – if not all – of the many features we find on Telegram. Honestly, I find some of them particularly useful.
WhatsApp – as part of Meta – is still one of the top messaging applications used globally. Countries like India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, and even the United States have a high number of active WhatsApp users. Mostly (at least in Malaysia that I’m aware of) it’s because of familiarity – WhatsApp is one of the early adopters of instant messaging services when everyone had easy access to the Internet, alongside Kakao Talk, Line, WeChat, and Telegram.
Unfortunately, not many have made it as far as Telegram and WhatsApp.
As these two messaging applications battle each other for the throne, I can’t help but to wonder – does WhatsApp purposely refrain from having all the extensive features Telegram offers because people find it difficult to switch platforms?
Regardless, what exactly are the Telegram features I find enticing to have on WhatsApp?
Feature #1: Scheduled Messages
I can’t lie; I use schedule messages a tad too often because of my conflicting schedule with a lot of people I interact with daily.
Seriously, scheduled messages are such a treat to people like me who want to plan on texting someone for plenty of reasons, in case we wouldn’t be able to make the time to text them.
You can wish your loved ones good morning or goodnight ahead of time in case you know your partner isn’t online at the time you’re texting them, you can set a reminder to the people you care about to take their meds every night, or you can schedule your text to your team, lecturer, or supervisor for enquiries or anything related to work to send in the morning instead of late nights when you are working on a project.
Really, it’s great for the people who prefer to plan ahead and not bother the others when they aren’t available.
“But Hariz, you can set your phone to automatically send someone a text instead”. Yes, I am aware. But the process is more convoluted, and repetitive. In other words, to set a message to be sent to someone, you would need to set it up through your phone settings, and it is fixed. To schedule a different message (to avoid making your text appear repetitive to the person you text to), you would need to undergo the same process again.
If only there’s a quicker way to do it… oh, there is. Telegram has it.
Why doesn’t WhatsApp have this feature still? This is really useful to avoid awkward situations with the recipient when you accidentally text your friends at 3 in the morning, having them panicking that you might send them ‘farewell’ messages.
Feature #2: Quick Story Edits
Ooooh, the story edit feature is really good to have on WhatsApp, too.
The way WhatsApp status posts work is that they work like a broadcast message: they send the post (whether as text, image, or audio messages) to the people you allow to view. So, to edit the status post you have ‘sent’ to the people is difficult, if not impossible. It’s like trying to edit, or revoke, the ‘message’ you have sent to tens, if not hundreds, of contacts you have saved on your phone.
It’s an “end-to-end encryption” message, after all.
Telegram stories work differently. They work like how the other two Meta social media (Facebook and Instagram) work, surprisingly. Since Telegram has a server of some sort that bridges both the sender and the recipient, the sender has an opportunity to make edits on whatever story posts they have made, because the sender only needs to “access the server” to make said changes.
So, let’s say you’ve posted a photo of yourself on Telegram, only to realise that you set the story to allow ‘Everyone’ instead of the specific group of contacts you prefer. Telegram allows you to edit the story post easily to edit the access instead of having to delete the post and re-post it.
I wish WhatsApp would have this, you know? Considering the large number of friends I have who prefer WhatsApp to Telegram, I post status updates far more often there than on Telegram. Being able to edit my status posts there would be such a blessing.
Feature #3: Spoiler Hideaways
Ah, Telegram allows people to edit their text to hide certain phrases or words as ‘spoilers’ – a feature I wish WhatsApp would have as well.
I don’t really use this feature often, but it is fun to pull pranks on my friends with this feature. I would send blurred text messages to my friends’ group, and they open the blurred text only to reveal things like “bruh” or “rat” – something random and completely unrelated to what we were talking about.
But sometimes, it is useful in a group with a large number of members, and you happen to discuss some really hot topics (e.g. popular movies) that most probably will have spoilers that you don’t want others to see just yet.
You can hide pictures or videos as spoilers on Telegram, too. It’s not strictly tied to text messages only.
The fact that WhatsApp still doesn’t have this feature baffles me. Now, to say that it’s a difficult feature to implement is such an overstatement – WhatsApp updates have done nothing but unnecessary UI layout changes. If the developers can take their time to really improve the user experience by implementing useful features instead, I wouldn’t have much hatred towards the application itself.
But hey, one can only wish, I suppose.
Feature #4: Deleted Messages
Before you come at me for dissing WhatsApp for not having the “delete messages” feature, I would like to first say that I do know it exists. I simply want to stress this feature, particularly between Telegram and WhatsApp.
I don’t like the notified “This message has been deleted” bubble on WhatsApp when someone, or I, delete a message. It leaves the recipient wondering what the message was before it is deleted. It is not a big deal per se, but it is also unnecessary to have.
No need to announce to the whole world that I’ve deleted my messages on WhatsApp. Please.
Telegram messages, once deleted, disappear for good. No notifications, no announcements, no trace, nothing. You wouldn’t have this awkward moment with the recipient of your (now deleted) messages, knowing that the receiver would want to know what was said. It happened quite too frequently with me, and they were mostly because the messages I deleted were meant for someone else instead.
Surprisingly, Telegram also allows you to delete someone else’s messages.
I’m very sure it only applies in a group chat, and the feature is granted to someone with authority (i.e. group admins). They are meant to moderate the group chats, so this feature is extremely useful for official groups that have a large number of members which are bound to have unnecessarily large numbers of messages not related to work (or messages that can go out of hand if they are to be exposed outside of the group).
If I’m not mistaken, deleted messages can only be seen by the group administrators, too. Or the group owner. So, regular members of the group do not have access to those deleted messages, or if they are informed of the messages being deleted.
So yes, the feature is definitely far more practical on Telegram than the one we have on WhatsApp. Maybe step up on the game, WhatsApp?
My Take on The Features
The features on Telegram are not the end of the world if they are absent on WhatsApp, of course. But it would be such a massive jump from a regular to a more advanced and practical instant messaging application.
I would love to see WhatsApp implement all of the aforementioned features because I swear, I use the application every single day, and those features would be such a step-up game for me to spice things up in the way I interact with the people on that platform.
Anyway, if you are interested in reading more of what I’ve written, feel free to check out my catalogue here. There are other interesting writers, too, so do check them out here too. Until next time!
