[General Topics] Menneisyys:
1.3 Not reviewed (discontinued / non-working / plain old / will be tested later) clients

1.3.1 AIM for WinCE

This is a very old, free Pocket PC AIM client. It doesn’t offer much functionality; this is why I haven’t considered it a serious contender to the rest of the reviewed applications. Also see this and this for more info.

1.3.2 Yahoo! beta client

Yahoo! also had a beta client but they have discontinued it (also see this) and completely abandoned the platform.

1.3.3 Odigo Messenger Force by Ruksun Software Technologies (now: Amiga Development India)

This commercial (it cost $25; a trial version is/was also available) application has long been discontinued and isn’t even directly mentioned on the developer’s mobile IM-related homepage. Also see this and this; note that these threads state it wasn’t even compatible with WM2003 (and, consequently, later operating systems), only with previous ones (PPC2k and PPC2k2).

1.3.4 Mig33 3.0

This MSN / Yahoo / AOL (received in 3.0) / VoIP client is midlet (MIDP)-based; that is, not a native WM application.

It didn’t work for me. No matter how I hard I’ve tried (with both the lite and the 3.0 beta version) on my HTC Universal to log into my existing accounts on all the three supported networks, it has always complained about my account’s not existing

Some people, however, stated it works with them (1 2 3 4).

1.3.5 MS Portrait

I haven’t included MS Portrait in the main test either. The reason for this is very simple: there are just too few users using MS Portrait, also taking into the desktop users into account. Furthermore, while the front camera problems are still not solved in the last, 3.0 beta version, few people will use this application for TCP/IP-based video phoning.

Please read this review for more information.

2. Comparison / feature chart

It's available here (CLICK THE LINK!!).

2.1 Explanation for the chart

I'd like to stress again and again that you really should read this section very thoroughly

to see what advanced functionalities these applications offer (there are MANY you may not even have dreamt of!)

to be able to decide between the clients. Unfortunately, there is no "this is clearly the best" title, albeit there’re very strong and highly recommended ones like mChat. This also means you need to compare the (missing) functionalities of each and every title so that you can choose the one that fits most of your requirements.

Note that I don't list the most elementary rows (for example, price, trial restrictions, Landscape orientation or Windows Mobile operating system compliance) here - only the ones that do require some explanation to make sense.

Connection type?: in here, there may be three choices: direct (which means a particular client connects to a service directly, without a(n invisible) gateway), indirect (meaning a(not necessarily visible) gateway between you and the service you're accessing) and SMS. Note that I couldn’t safely decide between the central server-based and the direct modes; for example, with Agile.

We've already seen what SMS-based messaging can be used for and what its (dis)advantages are. Direct and indirect data connections, however, require some additional explanation: in general, you may want to prefer direct connectivity because indirect connections might be somewhat less reliable. This isn't an issue with, for example, the indirect connection-based imov Messenger; however, with the current (beta) version of OctroTalk, it may be. In many cases, I was completely unable to get it connected just because the central OctroTalk dispatch server was out of service.

VGA?: this row should definitely be one to check out if you have a high-resolution VGA device (as opposed to low-res QVGA ones); in here, I've elaborated on the VGA friendliness of the apps. Unfortunately, as can clearly be seen, there are several IM apps that aren't really VGA-friendly because, for example, they (still) use pixel doubling.

Non-stable connections: Status (current discussions) kept when disconnecting?: one of the most annoying problem with some IM applications is the fact they just close the chat windows when your connection becomes unavailable, which can happen pretty easily for example if you are roaming with your device and the cellular signal strength decreases. The most important example of the behavior is IM+, which immediately shuts down all the open chat windows. Fortunately, not any of the other applications do the same.

Note that older versions of Microsoft's own MSN Messengers also did the same (even in WM2003SE). Fortunately, the most recent versions shipped with WM5 no longer do this. Kudos to Microsoft for fixing this very annoying problem!

Auto reconnect when the / a connection terminates?: this is also very important for anyone relying on the ability to receive instant messages any time, anywhere. (Once again, SMS- or Push Mail-based IM solutions are much better and more reliable! Data connection but not Push Mail-based solutions should only be used as a last resort in a mission-critical environment!)

MSN disconnect test?: I've also run some disconnect tests (with the MSN service only, as far as multi-service IM apps are concerned; with IRC clients, I've, of course, run the clients over IRC to see whether their sensing the disconnected state has been made quicker lately, as is, for example, also promised with the latest version of PocketIRC) to see whether a forced connection disconnect (emulating the above-mentioned cellular phone roaming situation) results in both the particular application and the desktop party it's connected to sensing the connection is broken. Note that positive “no problem at all” results don’t necessarily mean you won’t ever have disconnection / invisibility problems – a lot of users have been reporting cases like this with, say, IM+ (see for example this thread).

Easy / quick input: PDM’s: with some applications, you can use in-app defined text shortcuts to greatly reduce typing time by just sending a "canned", pre-written response to your buddies. Some apps allow for editing these messages and one, imov Messenger, even allows for constructing them from word / expression atoms to form real sentences. The latter is really an excellent idea!

Smiley input / output: as far as smileys (emoticons) are concerned, does

the particular client support inputting them using pre-made small icons?

use graphical icon when displaying received (or sent) smileys?

As can clearly be seen, most apps do support at least smiley rendering (and some even input). However, the number of smileys they know is pretty limited, Live Messenger being the best in this respect.

Command / input history quickly accessible with up/down OR a menu?: when you chat with someone, you may need to quickly retype something you've just said. In this case, a very quick way of scrolling back your recently-said messages can be very nice. Support for this, using the Up and Down cursor keys has been present in most IRC clients ever since the beginnings of IRC - just like with the command repeat / review functionality of the Unix shells or MS/PC-DOS with DosKey (with later DOS version) or dosedit.com (with earlier ones).

Unfortunately, this feature is only present in PocketIRC. None of the non-IRC applications support this functionality, which is a big minus with them all.

Readability, amount of information displayed at a given time: Font size settable (very important in native VGA mode)?: if you are a VGA user and have ever tried to run MSN Messenger in native VGA mode, you may already know it’s impossible to make its, in native VGA, unreadably tiny fonts larger. Fortunately, its successor, Live Messenger, has fixed this problem. Most other IM clients don’t suffer from this problem either – except for some of them (for example, imov Messenger Basic), all allow for setting the font size.