Messaging services focusing on recreational chatting like Telegram, Messenger, and WhatsApp typically offer their features free of charge. Business-focused apps like Slack do have some premium features, but their core features are free. Adding a premium tier to Telegram might not sit well with some users, but we don’t expect there to be any cuts in core functionality.
What does this Telegram premium subscription offer?
Right now, Telegram hasn’t made any official announcements about this, so we’re just going on what people have discovered so far. Some beta users with version 8.7.2 of the app saw some new reaction emojis that, when they tried to use them, prompted them to subscribe to the premium subscription. When you summon the panel to add a reaction, you’ll see a new star icon on the right side. When you tap it, you’ll see a page pop up showing you six of the new icons: a clown face, fire, vomiting face, shocked face, thumbs-down, and a heart. On the bottom of the page, you’ll see the text reading “Unlock additional reactions by subscribing to Telegram Premium”. Under that, you’ll see the blue buy button. The start icon will be the indicator that a sticker needs the subscription. One screenshot shows a collection of reactions with the start icon on them. When you tap on one of them, a page will show you that sticker and other ones that accompany that one with the call to subscribe.
We don’t know much about this
At the moment, there’s not much more information to glean. The users aren’t able to get to the payment page for the service, so we don’t know how much this will cost. I’d predict anywhere between $1.99/month and $4.99/month; that’s just a guess, however. $4.99/month might be high for just some emoji reactions, but we don’t know the full scope of this Telegram premium subscription service. There could be more features in the works that we don’t know about at this point. Since this is in the testing phase, it shouldn’t be too much longer before we start to see some more news on this. When it launches, there will most likely be an official announcement from Telegram, so hang tight.
