[General Questions and Answers] ejchis:
Okay, I've been looking for a good solution and haven't found one yet. I'm hoping some of the creative minds out here in the community can help me out.

I'm from the States, and I'm currently working in China. I'll be here for another 5 months or so. I'm a Nexus devotee, so I've got my Nexus 4 and my Nexus 7 here with me. The N4 goes everywhere with me, and the N7 is more of a couch/bed companion and a travel reader/movie player. I'm trying to find a good integrated messaging solution for communicating both with my colleagues and friends here in China as well as my friends and family back home.

When I first moved here, my plan was for Google Voice to be my solution. I had my cell number ported to Voice, and I have continued to use that for texts, voicemail, and VOIP calls using Groove IP. That has been a pretty handy solution, and it's nice that I can also access my messages when I'm sitting at my laptop through the Chrome extension. There are a couple of downsides to Voice though. The first is that it's kind of a clunky piece of software. It's certainly not sleek, and the syncing between devices can be a little hairy. I haven't figured out how to get a nicely functional inbox either. Google refuses to accept my China Mobile number for some reason, so I have to activate the app by using another friend's US number and then deactivating messages to her phone. Also, my friends and family members who are Apple users complain about the app being really poorly designed on Apple products. They don't actually need it of course (the reason I set it up was so my phone number would continue to work for everyone), but I can't control their end of it.

GChat/Talk is one option that I like quite a bit. It syncs really well between devices, and it's really clean and sleek. One issue I have with it is that, when my internet gets spotty at work (which is far too frequently), a message will sometimes arrive on my N7 at home, and I won't see it until I get home from work later that night. Also, once again, the Apple users hate this option because of the terrible choices on iOS.

In doing some research on some other options, I came across Kik, and I instantly fell in love. It's sleek like Talk with quick messaging, but it's more comprehensive with additional features and a better implementation of read/unread messages. I got it all set up on my N7 and was ready to tell everyone to sign up when I installed it on my N4. I looked at my N7, and I was back at the login screen. I logged in again and saw the screen pop up on my N4. The software does not support multiple devices. That's unfortunately a deal-breaker. Unless they fix that flaw, Kik is out the window.

I'm using mysms right now, and it's got potential, but I'm still not completely sure. I haven't really figured out the best settings to get it most effectively working with my China Mobile number and my Google Voice number. It's not as sleek and fast as Kik or Talk, and I've gotten some complaints from the Apple crowd about it not being very intuitive. But it does sync pretty well between devices, and I can access it easily on my Windows 7 laptop. So far, though, I'm not thrilled with it.

I would like to hear from the community any tricks with settings, additional apps to try, or other creative solutions to this. All ideas are welcome, and I'll be happy to try anything out to see how it works, so please don't be shy about any ideas. Thanks in advance for your help.