Nokia's Beta Labs has been hard at work on Nokia Messaging and they recently released a beta version of their IM app that works on S60 touch phones. We put it through its paces. Find out how we got on with our Nokia Messaging for IM Beta review.
Nokia Messaging for IM will let you sign in to several instant messaging services at once, and have yourself be instantly reachable via your phone. At the moment the beta supports Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Chat and of course Ovi Chat.
This may just be a quirk of the beta release, but the app installs as just 'Chat' rather than the more unwieldy official title "Nokia Messaging for IM beta". Eventually, we suppose, this could be destined to be such an integrated part of Symbian that 'Chat' will be all that is required.
For each service that you sign in to you get a tab along the top Nokia Messaging's clean, elegant interface. These tabs bear the icon of each service and can easily be swapped between with a single tap. Oddly, the tabs are organised to that the current tab is always in the centre. This can be annoying if you flip around a lot as the previous IM tab may not be where you expect.
The interface generally works well, though. The text is clear and new conversations clearly marked. On those services that support avatars you can quickly select one from your phone's gallery or take a quick snap with a front-facing camera.
One thing that was missing was any kind of universal contacts view. It would have been great to have a single page where you cold see all your IM buddies who are online, rather than having to check each tab in turn to see who is about.
Our biggest bugbear with Nokia Messaging was the way it used the hardware keyboard on our N97 - or rather how it failed to. The backspace key seemed set to erase the entire input line and the C key just wouldn't work at all. This is still a beta though, so we shouldn't be too harsh - lets just hope they fix it soon, as the app is crying out for hardware key support.
Nokia Messaging for IM shows real promise. There are problems, but this is still a beta release and if Nokia Beta Labs can sort them out this will be a best of breed Chat app.
Details
Price: Free
Size: 2.1 MB
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