Review: MobiTexter lets Android phone owners text from their PCs

If you have a friend who communicates only by text—but your fingers fumble at phone keyboards—MobiTexter could be the answer. This service works with an app on your Android phone to let you text from the comfort of your computer browser.

Once you install the app on your Android phone, you register your Google account with it, then head over to your PC. From your browser, MobiTexter asks for access to your Google account, including your contacts. After you grant it permission, the site links you right to the main texting tools. MobiTexter’s Web interface is basic, but serviceable. It automatically pulls in your most recent text message conversations, which are displayed in a list on the left side of the page. On the right, you have fields for entering new individual or group texts.

Like rival DeskSMS, MobiTexter limits you to 160 characters per message, and displays incoming messages in small pop-up windows. It does let you type more than 160 characters, but it starts a new message each time you reach the limit. And while it does display messages in conversation threads, it doesn’t automatically add incoming messages to those threads, which is unfortunate. It makes it harder to reply naturally when the message to which you’re replying doesn’t show up in the conversation view. I also wish that MobiTexter supported MMS, so you could send pictures and videos. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Still, MobiTexter is free and is a reliable way to send and receive basic texts on your computer.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor’s site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software after installing the Android app.