When it comes to chat applications on Android, there's no shortage of options. We have Gtalk, AIM, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and many, many others. Still, in a veritable sea of instant messaging options, Samsung has managed to provide a useful, unique, and feature-rich experience with ChatON.

ChatON is Samsung's way of connecting people - regardless of which platform they use - to their friends, family, and coworkers. It works across all major platforms, including Blackberry, Android (of course), iOS, Bada, and even on feature phones. It also has a tablet-specific interface if you prefer to chat it up on the larger screen.

It's full of neat and useful features - even more than most desktop chat clients - and is lightyears ahead of what SMS/MMS can offer. Need to share an image with a coworker? No problem - ChatON lets you embed images on the fly. Have something hilarious to tell your friend, but just can't explain it in text? Toss a recorded voice message directly into the chat. Have a video of your baby doing something extremely cute? Drop it in the chat and send it to the whole family at one time with ChatON's group chat feature. Tap, select, done. It's that easy.

  

And that's just the beginning of some of the awesome things that you can do with ChatON. It also lets you drop documents, calendar appointments, contact info, and even location coordinates directly into the chat! On the more playful side of things, ChatON also has a vast selection of smiley faces and "ani-cons" - short for animated emoticons - along with "animated messages," that will spice up your chat in a flash.

 

^{Left: The share menu; Right: The Trunk. Look at Liam's disgruntled little Bugdroid!}

You never have to fear losing any of the files shared within the chat, either. ChatON saves all the files uploaded - be it a document, image, video, or anything else - to the "trunk." Simply tap the box-looking icon in the chat window to pull up all uploaded files. Very, very handy.

Getting started with ChatON is a snap, too. Simply install it, set up an account using your phone number (it will send you a verification text), and you're ready to go. You can even connect the service to Facebook and Twitter to easily find all of your friends who are already using ChatON, as well as invite them all to join if they're not. The more people on your list, the better the overall experience and the more useful the app becomes.

Once you've populated the buddy list - it's go time. ChatON features an "interaction rank" to keep up with how often you interact with your friends. The more you talk, the higher the rank - an excellent way for all you Chatty Cathies out to settle once and for all who's the most talkative of the bunch. 

Best of all, ChatON is completely free to use across all platforms. If you've ever felt that your existing chat client is lackluster, then ChatON is a great solution - hit the widget and give it a shot.