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?
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