Botim - Video and Voice Calls Reviews

It is unthinkable how bad the quality of connection and service of Botim are. To top this up, the latest version started soliciting officious advertisement as if it were an unread message!!! It would have been understandable if it were a free version, but after charging 14$/month and delivering the above is abusive.
Even between the paid users the connection is unstable about 80% of the time. It’s is very common for a call not go through urging you to make 2-3 calling attempts, often even restarting Botim and/or phone. Sometimes at some point in the mid of conversation you stop hearing each other and other wait for 10sec and if lucky only one will get to listen and the other to speak unless you end up the call and call back anew. The only reason Botim gets 1 star rating is because this still works 50/50 in this country without resorting to VPN and sophisticated setups.

When I heard that there was going to be an app to call my friends and family online outside of the UAE, I was excited. I know there’s always bugs in a new program, Botim has them. You have to keep signing in after you are already signed up which is annoying. I registered, got a confirmation from Etisalat that I have the calling plan, yet it keeps making me sign in even though I haven’t signed out. Botim tells me ‘it’s timed out’, why would it if you’re signed up. When it times out, no one can call you. The video was weak, slow and periods of freezing, audio was better. I’m hoping these issues are fixed quickly so we can stay connected to far away loved ones. Will he worth the money if it works as well as Skype and Facetime used too.

Im using BOT for 3 years now and its a perfect app for me. When i updated my iphone to 13.0 my only problem now is when i send messages, i need to ring the recipient to be able to received my messages coz there is no notification on his/her side or unless he/she open BOT app so they can received all my messages. From my side it shows only one check from my message box but i am connected through data even wifi. Is there any prob on Botim or from my phone? Please help. Thank you and more power!😊

Botim is surprisingly poorly designed and i’ll explain why.

1. Poor battery optimization.
We use Botim with airplay on our tv and you can literally watch the battery drain in minutes.

2. Overheating
On numerous occasions, the phone while air playing like mentioned above, has turned off with the ‘temperature too high’ message. The phone switched off TO SAVE ITSELF!

3. Audio issues.
Botim which is primarily a communication app does not know how to handle noise cancelation. If a person talks, it automatically mutes the other side.
Which means if there’s a noise on my side, the person I’m speaking with is COMPLETELY MUTED. How can you carry on a conversation?

4. Doesn’t work with any of the apple features well.
As mentioned above in the noise cancelation, AirPlay. Furthermore, audio is still stuck on the phone when air playing. This is possibly the only app on the planet that does things this badly.

This is going nowhere and needs to be fixed!

Also, the apps developer website links to Botim . Which means they don’t have a way to get in touch expect for this review. It’s really a closed loop of disasters.

Love Botim! It has helped me talk to my parents in the UAE with ease. However either her or I get a strange feedback glitch where it repeats what I say back to my until it just becomes painful static. This happens both when I use speaker mode and regular, and happens just about every call now. I don’t know if this is just an issue with my phone or hers, but if you all could look into it that would be great! Again I am so thankful that Botim exists and would give it 6 stars if I could!

There are so many flaws with Botim. First, when you video call someone, sometime the speaker option works which is a what one would normally expect, but most of the time it does not and it’s frustrating cause you have to call the person a few times for video and speaker to work simultaneously. Sometimes the audio doesn’t work at all. Then, if you open another window on your phone and try to get back to your video call, the video part won’t open up again. For a paid app, the service is really bad and the engineers should fix the simple kinks to make this work seamlessly.

If I could give a rate of zero stars, I’d give that. Botim has not been working since the last update! I’ve subscribed for the internet calling plan (both data and home plan) from DU and etisalat, and since the last update, all the calls goes from ringing to “connecting”. Both the customer care at etisalat and du shad zero clue on how to help out or resolve this issue. And yes I’ve tried reinstalling, re-registering, and updating. None of it works! As it is, Botim is buggy and is bombarded with ads and offers, and to top it, Botim doesn’t work anymore! Saddest bit, I pay AED150 every month for this crap of a service! Horrible is an understatement for Botim and it’s so called service!

Since the latest update the voice calls are very noisy and there’s noises in the background you can’t hear anything every second it get disconnected. My connection is stable yet it says it is unstable I’m using 4g and paying for it. To be completely honest I have been using your app since it launched. And it is not worth the money. Every version you release there are always the same issues. You fixed the issue where it used to take alot of data for voice calls and I hope you fix this issue in the future and lower the subscription price because it is not delivering a 100% value.

I subscribed to the Internet calling plan on wifi 3 weeks back. I’m in the UAE where VOIP calls have been banned and people are now compelled to subscribe and pay for this app to make video calls. Initially it worked well. I use to call family and friends in the US and UK. For the past 4-5 Days, calls are unable to go through in-spite of repeated attempts. I called Etisalat and they are useless as well. What are we paying so much of money for? Or is this another scheme to loot people? This is a worthless app. I feel helpless now and don’t know how else to see my loved ones. Shame on you for swindling people of their hard earned money.

Been using it for the past 5-7 months to talk to my family in the UAE, Botim is good since there is no other option but the layout needs more work, to make it more smooth.
Another issue that only happens when using this app is how my phone overheats, it gets so hot as if i’m running a huge app or game, the battery gets drained really fast and if the phone is on the charger it won’t charge because of the overheating that is happening.

This is a terrible app. It’s so bad that it is unrateable. Please don’t bother with trying to get higher ratings as you are not even close to Whatsapp and Skype in their functionality and quality. I have been trying since yesterday to call my parents in India, but Botim wont connect any call, be it audio or video. I have paid and subscribed to this horrible service, but nothing is worthwhile. There is no proper support, no developer details, etc to get before downloading Botim . How is one supposed to decide? This is just another money making racket. Shame on you guys to swindle people of their hard earned money.

Frustrated user

Last seen is not reliable…it simply updates the last seen when someone hangs up a call if the receiver does not answer. Sometimes messages do not get delivered.
Notifications also not reliable…they ring again after opening Botim .
When I get a call on this app, even though I amswer it still keeps ringing.
Also please add a feature to switch from an Audio call to Video call.

What a horrible service! I use many VOIP apps to call Europe but for Dubai nothing else works but this app! The Dubai phone has to purchase this app service from etisalat and has to be connected to 4G. It will not work with wifi!
Even when I call my friends or business partners who have subscribed to this app service, it never works properly. It gets disconnected often, especially if they are on the road. And the quality of service is horrible in the UAE.
To be fair, if you use this app outside of uae, it works fine, but calls into uae or calls from uae are just not worth the effort and certainly not worth the 50 dirhams they charge phones monthly!!!

Everyday I keep having connection issues even though I have high speed internet with no connection issues and the caller also has very stable internet and we do video calls with other apps without any drop but Botim can’t even handle basic audio. We upgraded phones thinking that might be the problem, but there was no improvement. This is really horrific when you consider we pay 100AED/month on subscription alone.
And the ads every time you open Botim is abusive after paying subscription.

Looks like Eisalat got itself a good deal with Botim developer, whom I couldn’t find anything about her other than having this useless app.
So, Etisalat / Du monopolize the calling from the UAE and we have to subscribe to this obligatory 4G calling plan for 50 Dirhams / month, and funny enough, Botim doesn’t work.
You get disconnected every 50 plus seconds, and calling other parties becomes frustrating.
Botim developer is an amateur one, no contact details nothing, just an email and they don’t have the courtesy to reply back to many of the trouble tickets I submitted.
To make it short:
1- Botim doesn’t work on 4G or WiFi
2- Etisalat unfairly is charging 50 dirhams / month (plus taxes)
3- The developer doesn’t respond and doesn’t honor any sense of support or technical assistance
- Etisalat / Du monopolizing the connectivity in the UAE, they have the upper hand in blocking or unblocking what people can use
To make it short, USELESS APP, DOESN’T EVEN WORTH A ONE STAR

Hi there,
unfortunately in my country (Iran)sending voice during chat via this app is impossible , I wanna ask related technicians team solve the problem as soon as possible. It wasn’t like this before with previous update, but with new update we can just only write to chat.
thank you so much .
this app will be one the most favorable social media app in near future👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Seems like every day there’s a different bug or glitch, one will go away and the next day another one shows up. I’m trying to text and some messages aren’t sending and some are and I have to re send them in a different order and then it makes no sense, I’m tired of repeating myself and sometimes Botim after using it for longer then 5 minutes the text gets all buggy and when I’m type it gets super slow. This isn’t my phone Bc my iPhone 8 Plus runs perfectly fine. Fix it

This is not a great design but it IS good enough and voice call quality is better than typical cellular calls. It works in the UAE which is its best feature.

Unfortunately, Botim keeps repeatedly asking to message all your contacts to invite them to download Botim . Botim also has continuous pop up adverts.

The adverts are so frequent that it really spoils the user experience. I will never ever click on a pop-up advert. I would happily pay $2, if such an option existed, to be able to have an ad-free experience. ...

Are you really serious! Pay to remove ads? In a country where we pay to use Botim already? This is plain ridiculous but in the uae you don’t have a choice if you want to use VoIP this is the only option. What I don’t understand is why we have to pay to use and pay to remove the obnoxiously irritating ads!!!!!!

Very excited that this is one of only two VOIP apps we can use here.
Pls let the default page be the contact list or last called or messaged and NOT the ad page- it is very off putting.
Botim doesn’t notify you with a ring when someone calls if the phone is locked regardless of your notification settings so we miss calls-
Sometimes when you open Botim after a missed call the ring tone is activated even if the missed call happened hours before.
The above are quite frustrating so appreciate you looking into them.

I subscribed via UAE cell service provider because had no other choice of communicating w family in other countries. My parents couldn’t get this app to install on their iPad and they don’t have phones w apps. They are old. So haven’t been able to see/talk w them.
Also got it so our housemaid could see he kids back in Philippines. But her Samsung phone isn’t supported.
Botim performance with people who DO get it installed is poor and not always functional.
It’s frustrating uae forces usage of this poor technology. When other free much better performing and platform generic technologies exist.