Choosing Instant Messaging client for Windows Mobile

Since I have baught my HTC Touch Pro, it's awesome keyboard has opened up a lot of doors for me. Staying online 24x7 through GTalk has been one of them. It's very exciting to be online and accessible always. It helps you keep in touch with your friends. The choice for an appropriate IM client for Windows Mobile, is not a straight-forward one though. You have to first be clear about what to expect from such a client - whether it's chatting or voice calls or file sharing or something else. Then you can go on and select a client. Everyone of available free IM clients on WinMo, has it's own set of shortcomings; so it helps to have your priorities defined in advance.

Anayway, here I present a few (or rather most of the available) winmo IM clients, that I have used recently and the factors that set them apart from each other. I have listed pros and cons of each of them alongwith my personal rating.

I have used/tested these IM apps on my HTC Touch Pro running Windows Mobile 6.1. Though it's a shipped ROM and not a customized one, I have done some performance tweaking using Advanced Config Tool.


Palringo

Website: http://www.palringo.com/en/gb/
Download Link: http://www.palringo.com/en/gb/download/
License Type: Free

Supported Protocols:
MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo!, GTalk, ICQ, Jabber, iChat / MobileMe, QQ, Gadu-Gadu, Facebook Chat (Alpha)

Pros

1. Clean and simple interface
2. Works in power and data save mode
3. Location reporting in status (can be disabled if required)
   

Cons

1. Requires registration with Palringo
2. Weird notification - when an instant message arrives, there is sound played, and an icon is displayed in the start bar. but the pop up awkwardly contains two buttons - Open Palringo, Dismiss Message. Instead the message could directly have been reported in the pop up itself.
   
3. After opening Palringo following an IM notification, the user is not led to the IM session itself, rather he has to click on Chat to open it. Not very intuitive.
4. Gtalk voice-calling is not supported. only voice messages can be sent. Real time call is not allowed.
5. The default sound notification for incoming IM, is very lame. If you want to change it, only a WAV file is supported. It turns out to be a nightmare to find an alert of choice in WAV format. WMA format would have been much nicer to have as all pre-installed windows alerts are in WMA format.
6. If google or yahoo are the accounts you want to keep logged in, you will compulsory need to stay logged into the Palringo registered account. If you log out of Palringo, you logout of all other configured services. It means at least two IM services need to stay connected, which, I suspect, will result in higher data usage. It will also result in draining the battery.
7. HTML links sent in IM are not clickable in chat window. You cannot copy them either. Very frustrating.
8. Uninstallation is not clean. A link remains in startup, which keeps bugging you for missing Palringo executable, on each reboot. The registry entry is not cleaned up either. you have to do it yourself, which is not something that every end user will know how to.
   

Rating: 5/10


Fring

Website: http://www.fring.com/default.asp
Download Link: http://www.fring.com/download/
Licence Type: Free

Supported Services:
Skype, MSN Messenger, GTalk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!, AIM, Facebook

Pros

1. Supports calling google talk contacts through VoIP

Cons

1. Major: Fring appends its advertisements below every IM that u send. That's very bad in my opinion.
2. There is no way to update ur status on fring. Fring 'hardcodes' it to something like 'Online through www.fring.com'. That's bad too.
3. The interface is very amaturish and crude and contains a lot of annoyances. Hence not ideal for regular use, in my opinion.

Rating: 3/10


Nimbuzz

Website: http://www.nimbuzz.com/en/
Download Link: http://www.nimbuzz.com/en/mobile/download
Licence Type: Free

Supported Protocals:
Skype, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, AIM, GTalk and more

Pros

1. Has a good clean interface.
2. Supports file/photo transfers.
3. Supports VoIP chat with google contacts.
4. Has an interesting Buzz feature. More details here.

Cons

1. Major: DOESN'T HAVE NOTIFICATIONS!! You are notified only if the application is in the foreground! I totally fail to understand how come the designers/devlopers of Nimbuzz failed to understand the importance of proper notifications. It's like building a Ferrari and not putting in a dashboard inside - just the driving wheel. You can still drive using the driving wheel, but you cannot go and check the petrol every 10-20 mins. It's nasty.
2. With Nimbuzz, if my Touch Pro's screen is turned off, there is absolutely no notification, neither audio nor visual. Both, IM pings as well as IM voice calls, are not communicated. Frankly speaking, this shortcoming makes this powerful app utterly useless. I cannot stress its importance more. notifications are must-haves not nice-to-haves.
3. Major: Sometimes you may find that you are logged out without any reason. You never know for how long. It's very irritating.
4. Requires account registration with Nimbuzz.
5. HTML link is neither clickable nor the text is selectable in the chat windows.

Rating: 6/10


BeejiveIM

Website: http://www.beejive.com/
Download Link: http://www.beejive.com/download/winmo
Licence Type: Free (beta)

Supported Protocols:
AIM, iChat / MobileMe, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, MySpace, GTalk, ICQ, Jabber

Pros

1. No account registration required.
2. HTML links are clickable in chat window
3. Status bar notifications and sound notifs are available for incoming pings and they are good.
4. Clean interface
5. Easy to set Status quickly

Cons

• Doesnt support voice calling
• Doesnt support file/photo sharing
• Leaks memory big time.
• Sometime it can go down and simply refuse to connect. Happened twice to me; out of which, once, I believe, was due to memory leak, and it started working after a soft reboot. The other occasion was this error. But I am back up now after few days of inactivity.

Rating: 8/10


Octrotalk

Website: http://www.octro.com/
Download Link: No direct link, as you have to accept a EULA before the download.
Licence Type: Paid
Price: $29.95

Supported Services:
GTalk, Jabber, MSN Messenger, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!

Description

This is one IM app that I used to use on my O2 XDA Orbit, sometime ago. It was in beta that time, and I pretty much liked the functionality it offered, with very good notifications support. Now the IM client app has become paid, and is priced at a steep $30 (keeping in mind the presence of free IM clients).

Features

1. Supports majority of the protocols
2. Supports VoIP calls
3. Support file/photo transfer
4. Claims to support video calling
5. Clean and very minimalistic interface
6. Encrypted IM messaging for Google Talk (using TLS/SSL)

Agile Messenger

Website: http://www.agilemobile.com/
Download Link: http://www.agilemobile.com/download.html
Licence Type: Paid
Price: $44.95

Supported Services:
MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, AIM, GTalk

Description

While I found this IM client while searching on google, I didn't even give it a thought of testing, when I found out the ghastly price tag of $45!! And still no support for voice calls it seems. It only mentions voice messaging (which is not equivalent to voice calls).

Features

1. Voice/Video messaging
2. Photo transfer

A few Others

Below are two more free winmo IM clients that I came across, but found the interface very bad and non-intuitive. I wouldn't like to use them in their current state, hence I haven't reviewed them. The links are included here just in case they turn out to be useful to somebody.

Talkonaut

Website: http://www.talkonaut.com/
Download link: http://www.talkonaut.com/download.shtml
Type: Free

Slick

Website: http://www.lonelycatgames.com/?app=slick
Download Link: http://www.lonelycatgames.com/?app=slick&page=download&platform=windowsmobile
Type: Free


Conclusion

I have tried to capture the plus points and annoyances of each of the IM clients I used. After sometime of use, I have found BeejiveIM to fit my bill, even though it doesnt offer file/photo sharing or voice calling. Everybody has their own needs and expects different features. I hope this comparison helps people find their desired IM client app.

I have tried to be as correct as possible. In case you find any of the above information wrong/mis-interpreted, please let me know; I will verify it and will update this blogpost accordingly.

Technorati Tags: touch pro, winmo, gadgets, instant messaging, IM, gtalk