How To Install Wechat On Android Phone

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Gaynelle Alnutt

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:13:12 PM8/3/24

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I am a user of WeChat since many years. WeChat is a Chinese mobile phone application available for both iOS and Android. I use it to chat with people living in Peoples Republic of China. As you probably know, the common chat tools we use in Sweden and many other countries are not available in China. WeChat is almost the only alternative to chat with them and this is the reason why I use it. As an extra privacy safeguard I use a separate phone for WeChat.

I have moved my mobile life from iOS (iPhone) to Android. Or to be more precise, to /e/OS; an almost de-googled operating system built upon the AOSP Android Open Source Platform and Lineage OS. My phone is an older one and runs on Android 11 with development ongoing to be upgradable to Android 13. If I had used the phone with its native (stock) variant of Google-Android, it had stopped at Android 10 with no Android security updates any longer. But now my phone is up to date with security and other developments.

When I had installed WeChat on my /e/OS, I could not switch menu text from Chinese language to English in WeChat. Despite I changed it in WeChat settings. I tested German as well but no success. Swedish is not available in WeChat. I had my phone set to Swedish in the system settings, I added English, but it did not help. I tried several attempts with variants in the settings. I read reviews in the Google Play store that several other had same problem. So, this was in a way a relief that my issue was likely not related to that I use /e/OS instead of Google-Android.

Now, the phone is in English. But also WeChat is now in English! So, the issue with WeChat settings to English language not working has a workaround to set English in Android system settings. I have not tried what happens if I now change to Swedish as primary language, it is fine for me to have English on this phone.

Is there any legitimate concerns of using WeChat in phone or computer? Is it possible they expose message data to others or for their own use? Also, will the installation of the official WeChat app jeopardize or corrupt the security and privacy of the Operating system and other files/apps residing in the phone/computer? What are all the possible concerns of using WeChat and what is the worst case scenario? And how to mitigate the possible negative effects?

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If you have followed my stories you know that I have been living in Hong Kong for almost two years. And as soon as you arrive in Hong Kong or China, you hear about this messaging app called WeChat. I was told that it's the messaging app that everyone here uses. So... I installed it because I had to and frankly, at first I didn't really understand what the difference was between WeChat, Skype, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger...

WeChat is just another boring messaging app you have to install, another one to overload your phone even more. Plus, when it comes to messaging, WeChat is just as good as its American competitors actually. So you install WeChat and then... You hardly use it when you're Westerner because only the messaging part has an English version. Everything else is in Chinese, so we stay at the doors of the stadium without ever understanding why this app is so important for the Chinese. Do the experiment by yourself, install WeChat and you'll see how flat it is as an app... Honestly!?! What's wrong with those Chinese people getting so excited about such a poor, basic, tasteless app, so identical to the others?

Well, there's one good thing about WeChat is that you can pay with it or transfer instantly without any commission money to anyone with a WeChat account. You get to the cashier, open WeChat, scan the QR code that the cashier gives you, and you pay instantly. Well, nothing new under the Sun, you can also pay with WeChat, but still not enough to excite the techno freak that I am.

So at first, like any westerner that I am, convinced that our social networks are the best in the world while installing and using WeChat I was sad for those poor little Chinese who didn't have the chance to have Facebook, WhatsApp or YouTube. I looked at them with compassion and thought they were missing out on so many amazing things.

Here's my understanding of the whole thing: The genius of WeChat is that it's a totally open platform that can host other apps. WeChat is a FrameWork, it's "almost" an OS, a virtual machine that runs in iOS or Android and there are millions of add-ons or apps if you want to integrate with it. Moreover, the development of these apps is very easy and doesn't need to go through checks and validations like on the Apple Store or Play Store. Anyone can develop an app for WeChat easily and integrate it quickly.

You download WeChat to your phone and you almost don't need to download any other apps from the Apple Store or Play Store because everyone and all the services you'll ever need when you live in China have WeChat extensions that you can install by scanning a QR code. And when I say everything, that's absolutely everything. From filing a tax form to paying taxes, paying any bill, booking a plane, train or taxi ticket, ordering any item online... Everyone and every possible and imaginable service has a WeChat app. Every restaurant has a WeChat app for example. You're going into a public place, you want Wi-Fi? Easy, you scan the QR Code on the wall with WeChat and you get direct Wi-Fi. You want to line up at any entrance, scan the QR Code, and get a virtual ticket instantly. Even to get into your building you scan in your WeChat because all building managers have apps. At any time of the day or the night, using WeChat you can order just a can of beer, just one, and have it delivered for free within 30 minutes!

In fact, it would be almost possible to develop a WeChat OS and have just that on a phone because there are so many apps and extensions for Chinese people. This app has become the tool that manages the whole life of the Chinese. Tencent, the owner of WeChat is almost the most powerful banking system in the world. Visa and MasterCard have totally disappeared in China.

The boss of Facebook is sweating very hard all nights by dreaming that Facebook could have one-hundredth of WeChat's extensions. And when we talk to the Chinese about Facebook, when we show them our American app, they actually feel sorry for us... If nobody has Facebook in China, it's not because it's forbidden, but because it's an app that's 10 years behind what's done in China. In fact, the only people who have Facebook in China are more interested in acting "Rebel" or "American Way of Life".

But it's no use to them. In terms of banning or censoring, we have to understand that if they wanted to, absolutely ALL Chinese could install YouTube, Facebook or WhatsApp on their mobiles and use VPNs to access "the free world". It's very easy and all Westerners living in China do it without any problem. If the Chinese don't do it, it's because they are already very far away from social networking.

At this point you have understood one thing: If you are Chinese and we don't have a mobile and no WeChat, you don't survive more than 24 hours in the city. Everybody in China, 1.4 billion people use and depend on WeChat. This is something that we westerners have a hard time understanding because we have no equivalent to WeChat. But for a Chinese person, WeChat is not a joke; it is a matter of life and death.

So now imagine that WeChat is banned in the USA. Imagine that the U.S. excludes WeChat from the worldwide Apple Store and Play Store... Imagine that it's no longer possible to install WeChat on a Google or Apple phone without the need to Jailbreak it, risking that at any moment an update will compromise the only app that manages your life with all the consequences that could have.

I guarantee you that the vast majority of Apple mobile users in China and around the world would have to switch to a local mobile brand like Huawei just to have guaranteed continuity of service on WeChat. Abd just overnight, nobody will buy an Apple mobile in China and there is a chance that the whole Apple universe will lose interest... I'll leave you to analyze the consequences on Apple's stock and on the actions of its Chinese competitors. Watch this story very closely because the statements of each stakeholder are likely to be big panic movements on some stock.

i have fios 1gb internet with very decent wifi speed on the 5GHZ wifi at around 500mb download and upload. When I connect my iPad to the 5GHZ wifi everything is very fast except the wechat app ( it's like Snapchat type app that is widely used in Asia).

But when I switch to the 2.4 GHZ wifi at around 30 mb download, the wechat app goes back to normal all the voice chat and photos download in less than a second. Before fios I had cable internet, and wechat also worked perfectly fine.

i have been trying to debug this for months but for the life of me cannot figure out why the 5GHZ wifi is making wechat so slow. This is very frustrating because all my extended family use wechat to keep in touch daily, so I need to switch to 2.4 ghz wifi constantly just to download the wechat voice chats and photos then switch back to 5 ghz for everything else to take advantage of the much faster speed.