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Comment by martinald | Hacker News Reader

I don't quite understand how this works. WhatsApp web just lets you access your messages on a different device, it doesn't let you register an individual account or anything. Surely that means this people already have a phone that has WhatsApp? Why not just use that instead of this complex workaround to get it on the other phone?

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Jio is really really cheap... Last year when I was in India they had an amazing launch offer where you got 3 months 4G free, with 4Gb / day (yes per day!) bandwidth. It worked really well, and roamed easily between states.

I'm going to guess that:

* The phone is free / really cheap, advertising subsidised. Or subsidised to cross sell other Jio services (they have a bunch).

* It doesn't have WhatsApp either because it's pushing Jio services or because it is ultra low end.

* The users have another phone with an expensive data plan. They leave it at home on wifi running WhatsApp.

Not sure though...

Yes, but if you've already got a proper phone why not use that with the SIM from Jio. Surely the whole point of JioPhone is for users that have no other phone as it is so affordable?

Can't make heads or tails of this :)

Could they be running WhatsApp, e.g., on an emulator? Then the jio phone is their only real mobile device. Maybe they’ve even found a no-cost cloud service to host the emulator?

You don't need an emulator.

https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup

Is whatsapp tied to a sim? couldn't they register for an account by borrowing someone else's phone or something?

Yes, but the phone needs to be active and switched on for whatsapp web to work and AFIAK you can only have one whatsapp account per phone unless there is some weird hack I don't know about.

WhatsApp on the phone is effectively a server, and whatsapp web is a client. I can't see how their e2e encryption could work otherwise.

WhatsApp native and WhatsApp web doesn't work on those phones.

WhatsApp has a J2ME version, no? Do those phones not run Java apps?

FirefoxOS

But (unless it changed since I tried it) WhatsApp Web requires you to have WhatsApp running on a phone already, so as far as I can tell these people must be running WhatsApp on a phone that can run WhatsApp so that they can run WhatsApp in a browser on a phone that can't run WhatsApp.

Probably use the cheap phone to transfer video or pic since data plans on Jio are very cheap. The people who are buying these phones dont have lot of disposable income.

AFIAK it needs to go to the 'real' phone first, then it sends from the device. It would still use a load of data (unless they are using WiFi, but I don't think penetration of fixed line broadband is very high in India).

If you disable automatic loading of files, the main device wont use the expensive data plan while the web watsapp on the cheaper plan, the user can download it manually.

I believe you can signup on WhatsApp web. You simply need a phone number to verify your account.

I've put Whatsapp on several tablets by using free sim cards and an old smartphone. Still works.

How?

Actions on the smartphone:

Insert a 'free' sim card. Activate it. Write down the phone number.

Actions on the tablet:

Enable installation of unknown sources.

Download the apk file at https://www.whatsapp.com/android/

Execute the apk file

Use the phone number to activate Whatsapp

That's true, I've installed WhatsApp on phones with no SIM as well. You just need to verify the number, you don't actually need to have the SIM in for WhatsApp to work.

Oh, so you can run it in BlueStack as well?

I think so, but I've never tried that.

Thanks!

To use WhatsApp Web, your actual mobile device still needs to be connected. If I completely disconnect my phone, e.g. put it in airplane mode, I get this on WhatsApp web: Phone not connected. Make sure your phone has an active Internet connection.

https://imgur.com/NTIZpk8

The link follows to https://faq.whatsapp.com/faq/web/28080002

So I admit, I'm also struggling to see what the benefit of using WhatsApp through Browserling is.

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