Good read about alternatives incl. pros and cons of Telegram http://missingm.co/2014/02/fighting-...ted-messaging/
XMPP does not work well in an asynchronous mobile environment
The future of XMPP is looking bleak, particularly now that Google—one of its former champions—has abandoned the standard in favor of their proprietary Hangouts format
maintaining a persistent connection to an XMPP server on a mobile device doesn’t perform very well. It sort of works on Android, but frequent server disconnects, dropped messages, and reduced battery life make it a frustrating experience. It’s not even possible on iOS.