SIMSme 1.2.1

These days you can’t be too careful with your social life. Everything goes up in the cloud and even after you delete your account, a good chunk of your information still lives on. DP IT Brief GmbH tries to solve this problem with a highly-secured instant messaging client called SIMSme.

A lot of setup, quite unintuitive

Security doesn’t have to come at the cost of usability, though DP IT Brief doesn’t seem to understand much about user experience. While they have been able to create a secured environment for people to chat in, even cross platform, their SIMSme app isn’t very friendly and starting to chat with people can take as much as half an hour. If you’re not that desperate about security, you might as well consider other IM clients with a leaner learning curve.

One neat feature the app comes with is the ability to record voice messages by simply pressing and holding the microphone icon. Alternatively, you can simply hold the iPhone to your ear and record the message.

Some personalizing tools have been added to the app recently, including the possibility to change the backgrounds of your chats. You can pick from a series of designs that come with the app or upload your own.SIMSme supports landscape view and it comes with automatic recording of voice messages, which can be easily powered on from the Settings area. Whenever one of your contacts signs in in the app, you’ll get a notification.The tool is well integrated with iOS, and it supports TouchID for unlocking of the app.

Security is top priority

However, if you’re the security-crazed type, SIMSme is indeed what you’re looking for. When you finally manage to get past the setup process, which includes struggling to get your friends on it too, you can send self-destructible messages and files, share your location, and even do regular texting with end-to-end encryption.

Your info isn’t stored on servers, or so they say, which explains why you can’t recover your password if you forget it. This kind of usability can take a tumble in exchange for security. However, as far the design goes, DP IT Brief doesn’t have many excuses for giving users and app half filled with blank screens and no instructions on how to add people to the network.

According to the developer, “Your data remains YOUR data. Messages are encrypted on the sender's device and can only be decrypted on the recipient's device. Even we, the operators, cannot view your messages on our own servers.”

Since the app boasts about the security levels it offers, banking on the NSA mass surveillance scandal, you can save any media content you receive and have it encrypted within the app.

Once you get the hang of it, it’s different

Admittedly, while the setup process and other features are a bit unfriendly, once you get used to it you’ll probably keep it on your home screen. The chat windows don’t emphasize emojis and stickers, so this one is for the more serious types.

Add to watchlist:

Instant messengerChat

• Kik 8.1.0
• Skype 5.11
• Strings 1.0.7
• Hangouts 3.1.0
• Signal 2.0.1