Originally Posted by
Analise
Is it necessary to download a specific app to get free texting?
It depends. If you have an iPhone, you should be able to use iMessage for texting other iPhones through the normal Messages app. Other than that, you'll need some sort of Wifi-based messaging app. Examples would be Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Google Hangouts. I don't have T Mobile, but I think all their text messaging is done over Wifi as well which is different from traditional SMS (short message service) texting and should work on this system.