Using Yes Life by Yes 4G. A Review.

Are you a Yes 4G subscriber? If you are, do you remember your sales guy asking you to choose a 018xxxxxxx number when you first signed up?

Did you know that this number is an actual valid mobile number approved by MCMC (SKMM)? What that means is you can make calls from this number to any other number in the world, just like from your Maxis/DiGi/Celcom number! And that you are getting a free mobile number when you signed up for Yes and not just 4G mobile internet.



Now, if you don't remember your number, you can check for it in the My Account under Yes No. (sounds like a oxymoron).

Where your number is from the My Account screen

Now that you know you have a mobile number, you may ask how do I make a phone call without a SIM card? Did the sales dude forget to give you one? How can you get a mobile number in your handphone if you don't have a SIM card?

The answer is Yes Life.

What is Yes Life? 

Unlike GSM providers like Maxis, Yes does not have a GSM network to begin with. Yes 4G uses a different network altogether, known as WiMAX (a competing technology with LTE) and has a fully IP based backend. To provide voice and SMS services like Maxis, Yes uses VoIP (Voice over IP). Putting it in a very layman term, is a similar technology Skype and Viber which you can make calls using the internet.

Yes Life is the brand name for a set of VoIP apps which Yes has developed which you can simply sign-in using your Yes ID and start making calls and SMS.

With Yes Life, you can make calls at a rate of RM0.09/min (or free depending on your plan) to any local number including landlines and send SMS at a rate of RM0.09/SMS (or free depending on your plan). You can even call and SMS international numbers using their IDD. The IDD rates are not too bad, for example, calling any USand China number (mobile and landline) costs only RM0.09/min while the SMS costs RM0.18/SMS.

Why is Yes Life Better than Skype or Viber?

Can you send an SMS to your friend using Skype? Well, yes, but you need to pay a subscription fee for it and the SMS cost is not that cheap. Yes gives a rate of RM0.09/SMS (or some plans give free calls and SMS) and your number is already given to you when you subscribed for their services.

Can you send an SMS to your friend on Maxis using Viber or Whatsapp or Line? No. But don't get me wrong, I love these apps! They are great for sending FREE messages on especially when many of your friends already have them installed, but for those cases like your mom, dad, aunty, uncle, and people who do not have these apps installed, you can call and SMS them just like a normal phone using Yes Life.

No Roaming Charges

Ever been overseas and made a call home? I did. A two minute call home from Thailand would cost me RM10. Why? Because of crazy high roaming charges.

Here's an alternative. When you go overseas, either:

1. Buy a local data only plan and use Yes Life
2. Subscribe to your telcos daily roaming data plan (normally around RM33/day unlimited. check with your telco) and use Yes Life
3. Find a free WiFi and use Yes Life

This way, you will always be able to call and SMS home local rates with ZERO roaming rates!

Secondly, you can happily receive calls from with ZERO roaming rates too!

For frequent flyers, I can see this as a good value for them.

How to use Yes Life

There are a few ways of getting started. You can:

1. Install it on your Windows or Mac computer. 
2. Install it on your iPhone (calld YL for iOS) or iPad (called YL HD) or Android phone.
3. Use a Web browser, such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari to sign in
4. Buy a Buzz or Eclipse phone which has the app built in
5. Buy a Zoom to use it as a desk phone (no SMS unfortunately)

Taken from Yes website

You can check out Yes Life and download them from the Yes website here.

I personally use my iPhone 4 and the web version the most. The web version is pretty neat, giving me a number of other feature the other platforms do not, such as email, calendaring, cloud storage and allowing me to access my contacts, SMS and call logs even from a computer I do not own. Sending SMS is a very easy thing to do on a big screen. 

As far as I can remember, none of the telcos actually have a web based system to send SMS. Wait... DiGi has something like this, but I had a limit of sending 3 free SMS a day (to other DiGi customers only) and it was a very simple system. No address book, no group SMS, no SMS logs. 

Gmail now also allows customers to send free SMS on selected telcos, but they don't have call services in Malaysia yet. Also when you receive an SMS from Gmail, it is not the senders mobile number that you see. And the when the receiver replies, he is charged RM0.10/SMS or RM1/week (depending on telco). However, this is just not a great SMS experience IMHO.

So I recommend you try Yes Life Web yourself. You have nothing to lose. Go to http://web.yeslife.my. Note that this site is not made for mobile devices because it still uses Flash technology.

I've also tried the Eclipse phone, which is not a bad device (though the OS is a bit dated) for using Yes voice and SMS services.

Tips on using Yes Life

Here are some interesting tips for you from my experience of using Yes Life. Did you know:

1. You can login to a few Yes Life apps at the same time? That means, you may have your Yes Life Web and Yes Life iOS and Yes Life HD and Eclipse and Zoom turned on simultaneously and when you receive a call, all will ring! You can then choose which one you want to answer and the other one will stop.
2. That your Yes ID is actually an email address? You can actually send and receive mails through Yes Life Web or configure your phone via IMAP or POP3.
3. That you can store your address book on Yes Life Web and sync it with Yes Life Windows/Mac, Buzz and Eclipse?
4. That you can store and share files via Yes Life Web, similar to Dropbox? If you forgot a thumb drive and want to copy a file, don't worry. Just sign in and go to Storage and upload any file. Then click Share and copy the link. This link can then be sent to anyone to download the file. Try downloading a file I uploaded here. Don't worry, it's just a Yes Life PDF help file I got from Yes. :)
5. That you can make video calls from the Eclipse to Yes Life Windows or Mac and vise versa.
6. That you can turn on call forwarding, voicemail and missed call notifications all for free? Just dial the following codes from the phone dialer and press Call:

Taken from the Yes Life FAQ

Conclusion

While Yes Life may not be the best VoIP or messaging out there and has its share of bugs, it still can be very useful for us Malaysians and those who are already Yes customers out there. It's a free value added service with competitive voice and SMS rates. It is unfortunate that a lot of Yes customers actually do not know of this built-in feature when they buy their Yes 4G, but I've talked to those that do know and they are mostly quite happy with it.