Telegram Premium announced: Here are the extra features that it offers
Telegram Premium has been officially announced. All existing features remain free, as Pavel Durov confirmed last week, but the subscription offers you some additional benefits.
Telegram Premium features
Increased file upload size
Free users can upload files that are up to 2GB in size, Telegram Premium users can send up to 4GB files at a time. The storage space is unlimited for both tiers. The company says that Premium users will get the fastest possible download speeds.
Double everything - More Chat Folders, Groups and Channels, Pinned Chats
Telegram Premium is doubling the limits for channels and groups that you can join, it supports up to 1000 channels. Subscribers can pin up to 10 chats, create 20 t.me links that are publicly accessible. Oh, and it allows you to save up to 400 animated GIFs.
In comparison, free users can only set 5 stickers as favorites, join 500 groups and channels, pin 5 chats, create 10 public links, and save 200 GIFs.
Better Chat Management
The instant messenger's paid tier will allow you to organize your chats with its new Chat Management tools. Users may choose the default chat folder, or set the app to open a custom folder or display only unread messages. You can reorder the chat list by pressing and holding a folder, and dragging it to a different place. The premium subscription gains a feature that can be enabled, to automatically archive or mute chats from people who are not in your contacts.
Voice-To-Text Conversion
Received a voice message, but don't want to listen to it? Telegram Premium will convert it to text, and you can rate the transcriptions. It's sort of like a reverse Voice-typing experience.
Personalization
Premium users get access to unique stickers with full-screen animation effects. These stickers will be viewable by all users in the group. Likewise there are 10+ new emoji reactions that you can use in chats. The paid tier gives you a few extra app icons that you can choose to add to your homescreen.
Subscribing to Telegram Premium will display a special badge (a star) next to your name across the app (chat list, member list, etc). Your profile video will animate in all sections of the app too.
No Ads in Channels
Telegram displays privacy-concious ads (sponsored messages) in large channels in select Countries, if you are a premium subscriber, you won't see these ad messages.
The one thing that the company has not mentioned in the announcement, is how much will Telegram Premium cost? TechCrunch says that the plan will be priced at $5-$6 a month.
Opinion about Telegram Premium
Is it worth paying $4.99 for a monthly subscription of Telegram Premium?
The personalization features offered in the premium tier appear to be fluff. The Chat management and folders seem nice, but the most interesting benefits in the paid plan are the higher file upload limit and the faster download speeds. I've shared files around 1GB files a few times after compressing them using 7-zip, those were the biggest files I sent through the service. The upload and download speeds are acceptable, I'm not sure how the new "faster download speeds" are going to be.
That said, if you're someone who uploads a lot of files and uses Telegram as a backup service due to its unlimited storage space, then the premium tier maybe worth looking into. It's good to see that existing features have not been paywalled by the instant messenger, which now boasts 700 million active users.
Are you going to subscribe to Telegram Premium?
Telegram has gone from a reasonable system to one recently that now sucks. Most of the channels will not open and the system just says connecting.
Telegram has shared user data with authorities, contrary to it’s official claim that it hasn’t:
https://restoreprivacy.com/telegram-sharing-user-data/
You might be a tewowist, ya know!
Telegram sucks, there’s no way to hide contacts. It always shows your contacts. Why there’s no option to show just the chat list like every other chat messenger? And everytime someone in your contact join Telegram, there will be a notification.
@ShitonPlasma, common misconception.
It doesn’t matter how many use the app, as long as the ones you need to be in touch with do. Or do you personally communicate with the millions of Telespam users?
You could have made your point without the name-calling. What are you, five?
“Are you going to subscribe to Telegram Premium?”
I’m using Threema and only Threema. ;)
You and another five people.
count me too :)
All of my friends are using Threema. :) And all is encrypted, even meta data. Just everything… and you can even use it without the need of having a mobile number. And the servers are only based in Switzerland. And of course it’s open source and it’s regulary audited by external security companies.
Bought once, always to use. ;)
For that price, you might as well get Threema (c. $5 ONE-TIME-PURCHASE) for much more anonymous/secure chatting
Who the f*** uses Threema? Pretty shitty users base… C’mon guys let’s be serious, how can you even suggest it as an alternative to telegram?
Telegram is the best and also it has the best stickers in the world! :D
I’ve been a user of Telegram’s almost from the very beginning. It’s an amazing piece of software. Not sure whether I’ll cough up for the Premium (it’s really more about supporting the development than any particularly useful new features), but it’s good they’ve gone down a sensible route.
Its a much better appication than WhatsApp on almost everything.
Not only because users can share 1.5 GB versus 16MB.
There is so much more and not only because thats its not a facebook/Meta company.
Whatsapp has 100MB limit currently. If you follow ghacks news, soon they will increase the limit to 2GB.
Still sucks though, chat backups are uploaded to Google Drive.
+1
Thanks @Aswhin for the article. :]