Bluetooth Chat – a Winner in the Communication Technology?

Ever since the mobile phone made its way to the pockets of millions of users around the world it became the fastest and most efficient way to communicate. That is why, no matter the form of communication it took, mobile chat became popular among people from any corner of the world. One popular way, especially among teenagers, of communicating between mobile devices is by sending text messages, also known as SMS (Short Message Service) or mobile chat. As technology moved on, so did the chatting community; when mobile phones started implementing the new bluetooth feature, users found a new way to chat, by installing a simple java application on your phone you can begin to chat via Bluetooth or bluetooth chat. Bluetooth chat is a direct text chat between two or more users, where every one of them utilizes a bluetooth device and names it (optional). This way of communicating is generally used in a public and populated space like a pub, a street, a plaza and so on.

The first commercial SMS message was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in the United Kingdom on 3 December 1992, from Neil Papworth of Sema Group (using a personal computer) to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone (using an Orbitel 901 handset). The text of the message was "Merry Christmas". The first SMS typed on a GSM phone is claimed to have been sent by Riku Pihkonen, an engineer student at Nokia, in 1993. This was the beginning of the mobile chat; since then people have been sending millions of messages, creating a new way to communicate. The next step for mobile chat was obvious: bluetooth chat.
To initiate this chat, one goes to the connectivity menu on his/her device and turns on the bluetooth port. Next, one should try to discover new bluetooth devices in order to find and add some bluetooth co-chatters. Now that the list is made, one can create a note and send it via bluetooth to the other devices/users.

But what are the advantages of bluetooth chat? Is it better than the simple but effective SMS, that has been used to mobile chat for all these years? Well, the answer is both yes and no because, as we all know, sending an SMS isn’t free, while using bluetooth is completely free; all you have to do is get a chat program and activate you bluetooth and you can start chatting. The downside is that bluetooth has got a limited range and you can only chat with people that are within its perimeter; so if you want to send a message to a friend that is not in your close proximity you will have to pay. The main disadvantage of Bluetooth chatting is that complete strangers can communicate with others using Bluetooth devices. The term “Bluejacking” refers to people who send irrelevant, surprising, or shocking messages to strangers in their vicinity.

Mobile and Bluetooth chatting caught on so fast because in certain situations when you need to communicate with a person you cannot always call due to the noise in the area or simply because you are in a hurry; that is why mobile chat makes for a simple and effective way to send a message. It just shows the way in which communication technology evolves, from the simple mobile phone of yesterday to the complicated and multifunctional phones of today. The next big step for mobile chatting will probably be video chatting using the new 3G network systems that will allow people to also see each other while they talk; who knows what may come in the future? Maybe the bluetooth chat will disappear because of too many bad jokes, or maybe one day we will just have to think of the person we want to talk to and we will be able to do that in futuristic virtual reality.