Free video calling and messaging app for Android

Tango allows you to make voice and video calls for free on your Android phone. You can also use the app to send instant messages, share photos, play games, and even listen to music.

Hang out with your buddies

Tango allows you to connect to your friends face-to-face. You can make calls to your buddies on Tango regardless of whether they use iOS, Android, Windows Phone, or PC; using WiFi, 3G, or 4G to connect.

As well as letting you make voice and video calls, Tango allows you to play games and send animations while you’re chatting to someone. This is great for killing some time with a buddy who is far away, or just to liven up a dull conversation!

Text chatting with Tango is great fun, too. Besides just sending typed messages and emojis, you can add fun animated emoticons, record and share voice and video, and even search for and share music, which you can then listen to together via Spotify. The app supports chats of up-to 50 people – including groups like ‘hot topics’ and ‘nearby places’ to get you started. It also includes support for SMS messaging.

Tango is good for meeting new people too. The app includes ‘People you May Know’, ‘Nearby’, and ‘Around the World’ sections, where you can hook up with people who you might be interested in hanging out on Tango with. You can find new people by looking at their location on a map, shaking your phone, or swiping through and favoriting profiles in a similar fashion to Tinder. On the flip side, this means that you can be contacted by random people, and there doesn’t appear to be any option to make your profile private – or many privacy settings at all in terms of who can see what.

How to chat with Tango

The setup process for Tango is painless enough. You just need to your name, phone number and email address to get started (no verification code is required like with WhatsApp or Viber, for example). Tango automatically adds contacts from your phone who have the app installed, so you can get chatting to these right away. Connect up to Facebook with Tango and you’ll be able to see all of your Facebook friends who use the service in your Tango contacts, too. Recent updates have also it possible to scan QR codes generated in-app to connect.

The menu for the Android version of Tango is easy enough to get around, and the user interface is smartly designed. The various features of the app are well labeled in the top menu bar, and there’s a Facebook-style news feed where you can see all your friends, photos, and updates together.

In general, call quality through Tango is good, and rivals that of most other video chat apps for Android.

The verdict

Tango makes it fun, easy and free to chat with your friends. It boasts decent call quality and more features than you’ll see in most mobile VOIP and messaging apps.