I find it's an excellent way to practice listening and speaking. Every voice message is recorded in your mobile phone so that you can listen to it again and again.
I use weixin.
http://weixin.qq.com/
Some italki friends may use whatsapp.
http://www.whatsapp.com/
They are both cross-platform mobile messaging apps which are available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia.
Those phones can all message each other, send text, images, audio and video for free!
Do you use any other similar apps? If you are a native English speaker, or you want to be my language partners for learning Chinese, ask me for my weixin ID.
Thank you Rosco :)
I like 微信 (Wechat) better, cause I don't have to tell others my phone number and I don't need to know others' either.
I downloaded Whatsapp and I uninstalled it soon.
I use 微信 (Wechat) for contacting Chinese, WhatsApp for Western friends, and sometimes Kakao for some Korean friends :-)
WhatsApp & WeChat are the best
I haven't made free calls on my smart phone yet. Thank you for your information :)
WhatsApp. My Taiwanese girlfriend shared this with me when she took a vacation to Europe. Her Spanish friend uses it, her sister in Germany uses it, and when I added it I found some of my contacts were using it - mostly international travelers.
I also just downloaded Viber. It's like Skype but has unlimited free calling is the purpose. I used it to talk to a woman in Bali for an hour. It worked well.
I use Skype for video chats with my girlfriend while she is on vacation and we both have a smart phone (iPhone and Android phone) so it works well since we both have a front camera.
