Review: MobileChat

Overview With the iPhone filling up with chat apps, you'd think it would get heavier. How do all those people fit inside your phone... Enter MobileChat. It's been around for a while as a jailbreak app, but twenty08 has ported it over to the App Store in its latest version.

Functionality

MobileChat offers users the ability to add multiple IM accounts such as AOL, Yahoo and Google Talk. If I had been able to get this app working on my iPhone, I would have been able to see what it looked like, but alas, even after multiple installs (thinking that my initial install was bad), I still could not get it working. My messenger accounts would never load up. Another time, as you can see in the image below, the app froze up while trying to enter my screen name. It did produce a nice shot of the iPhone's magnifying glass effect, as I was trying to correct spelling. Ah well. The bottom of the screen has four options:

• Buddies - Displays a list of all the friends you have from the various accounts.
• Chats - I would surmise that this screen shows you active chat sessions?
• Status - This allows you to set your status. With the + button, you can add custom status messages.
• Accounts - You can add AIM, Yahoo, Windows Live, Jabber, GoogleTalk and even MobileMe account for messaging.

Review

With the plethora (oooooo, can't believe I worked that one in) of chat apps out there for the iPhone, including Palringo and AIM, I just can't recommend MobileChat to you at all at this time. Perhaps twenty08 will get the kinks worked out soon. Although it looks like a wonderfully simple and aesthetically pleasing app to use, there are some background concerns. One of MobileChat's features is that even when it's not loaded up, it keeps track of your chats in the background. It does this by storing them on the twenty08's site servers. A solid review over at Better Elevation notes raises some security questions and posts a response from twenty08 about that.

Summary

All those people inside my iPhone chatting away apparently choked it up. I've read other glowing reviews of this app but simply can't give it one due to my experience. Combined with a $2.99 price tag while other chat apps remain free, I would encourage you to check out Palringo instead.

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