When comparing Swarm by Foursquare vs QKSMS, the Slant community recommends QKSMS for most people. In the question“What are the best Material Design apps?” QKSMS is ranked 7th while Swarm by Foursquare is ranked 77th. The most important reason people chose QKSMS is:
When a new sms is received, a window will pop up that has the message and allows answering it from there, without having to open the app. It can be dismissed by tapping anywhere else on the screen.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Stickers
Formerly known as badges in the original app, you will be rewarded stickers whenever you check-in to a specific place or for the number of check-ins you have made.
Pro Mayorships
Mayorships is a feature where the person with the most check-ins in that particular place will be rewarded with a mayorship of that particular place.
Pro Leaderboard
Leaderboard is a features that ranks how frequent you and your friends gain points via check-ins, exploring new places and mayorships.
Pro Powered by Foursquare
All of the places data is obtained from Foursquare, as Swarm is part of Foursquare product.
Pro Allows responding to SMS without opening the app
When a new sms is received, a window will pop up that has the message and allows answering it from there, without having to open the app. It can be dismissed by tapping anywhere else on the screen.
Pro Per-conversation notification settings
Users can set different notification settings per user as an easy way to know who is messaging without having to look at the actual message.
Pro Easily communicate with groups
Users can communicate with large groups at the same time due to the included group messaging feature. This is convenient when trying to synchronize with friends or colleagues.
Pro Very active developer who listens to the community
While QKSMS is one of the younger apps, the developer is quickly adding features/fixing bugs.
Pro Free
The app is available for free with an optional donation IAP that ranges from $1-$10.
Pro Beautiful design
Responsive, highly customizable Material Design interface makes for a native looking app that fits in well with Google's UI design guidelines.
Pro Save yourself from sending out bad messages
Through delayed messaging one can set it up so that a message is not sent automatically. This can help for those times that it may be best to think something over before sending out a rash message.
Pro Readable in day or night due to themes
There are light and dark themes available within the settings which can be switched depending on how light it is around one when using the app. The dark theme can also help to conserve battery when being used as not as much brightness and hence battery will be used.
Pro Schedule messages
Users can schedule messages to be sent for later.
Pro Convenient Android Wear support
Those that own an Android Wear device will be able to set it to receive their messages on the Android Wear device making for convenient notifications and easy messaging through not having to take their phone out.
Cons
Con Viewing a place requires main Foursquare app
Since there is a split between place discovery and the social check-in feature in main Foursquare app, anyone who wants to check out a place must install the main Foursquare app in order to view the places details, photos and contacts.
Con Last update was 2021
Con Buggy
There are little annoyances here and there, from dark theme problems making text unreadable to crashing and missing notifications.