Telegram for Android is a very clean and fast messaging app. There’s not a lot of bells and whistles here, but then, the messaging is fast and relatively glitch free.

Telegram is a super lightweight instant messaging app. The developers rightly put the focus on a streamlined and smooth messaging experience, and didn't bog things down with redundant features or glitchy gimmicks, like WhatsApp or Line.

Easily create group chats with up to 200 friends at once! Who the heck is messaging 200 friends? Jeez! But good to know if I suddenly widen my social circle, we can all bore each other to tears with over sharing and redundancy. I love that you can share videos up to 1gb. Really? 1gb?!? Ok, that’s gotta be quite the sex tape. Sending multiple photos at once is convenient and cloud storage assures you’ll never miss a transcript of all these important conversations; so go a head, entrap a cheating spouse or blackmail your ‘friends’ with their own words. But wait – the ‘self-destruct feature should keep your deniability intact; so go ahead, send that sexting message, and set it to delete itself shortly after your recipient reads it. This might be a great way to hurl insults too, and have no record of it after your temper cools; (lol.)

The best part about this app, other than speed, is that it’s completely free, with nary a donation screen or ad. Not sure how the developers are going to swing that, but kudos to you.

Telegram is an excellent messaging app with a host of useful functions, and the intelligence not to overload itself with glitchy stickers or emoticons. The layout is clean, permissions are minimal and the privacy settings are great. I think this is a worthy competitor to WhatsApp and other mainstream messaging apps that have just gotten too big for their britches.