Fed up of the default Android Messaging SMS app? QKSMS adds some pizazz to your texting, offering a beautiful tool that's packed with handy features.

Why use QKSMS?

QKSMS is arguably better featured and better looking than both the pre-Android 5.0 Messaging app and the latest Google Messenger app that comes with Android Lollipop devices.

In terms of features it can do pretty much everything the stock Android SMS apps can do - and more. You can access your phone's contacts through QKSMS, then send MMS attachments, set up group chats, and insert emoticons. The app has a handy QKReply feature that allows you to instantly respond to a message when it pops up, or tap anywhere outside the message to dismiss it.

Delve into the Settings menu in QKSMS and you'll find a bevy of options that you can tweak to maximize your SMS experience. Among the options you can toggle on or off are: delivery confirmations, splitting long SMS into separate messages, report failed MMS deliveries, and QuickCompose, which allows you to click on a message notification to compose a response.

Slick design

QKSMS boasts a gorgeous design, and I'd argue it looks even nicer than the latest Messenger app from Google. Like Google's app, QKSMS follows the bold, colorful Material Design style. However, this app allows you to customize the colors of the interface, picking from a palette of 19 different colors. There's also a Night Mode, which turns the background color black for better viewing in the dark.

Notification support in QKSMS is good, and there are plenty of ways to customize the way you receive alerts. For instance, you can change the notification LED color, set your phone to wake when you receive a new message, show snippets of messages in the notifications bar, or choose to hide message text in notifications.

You can change the notification sound in QKSMS, although there's no way to set custom sounds for individual contacts.

I encountered a few small bugs when testing QKSMS, and it seems from the user comments on Google Play that others have had similar issues. Hopefully these will be weeded out in future updates. I hope the developer adds location sharing, too.

The joy of text

QKSMS is a great looking SMS app that makes for a hassle-free way to chat via SMS on your Android phone. It's certainly an interesting alternative to the stock messaging client. Worth a try.