iPhone Instant Messenger Apps

IPhone Instant Messenger Apps Annie: Yours by popular demand, a judgment of three instant messaging applications for the iPhone. Hi I'm Annie and welcome to another AppJudgment. Now, anyone with an iPhone and a Pulse is well aware by now that AT&T hasn’t been winning any trophies for stellar service lately. In fact, as simple Twitter search for AT&T sucks will show you an ever growing litany of grievances in minor horror stories of dropped calls, dead zones and text message backlogs. So for those of us with iPhones, it feels like a good idea to have a variety of ways to get in touch with people instantly in the event that you're telecom service is acting shady. And with the help of E glide viewers like Andre and Lucas, we were able to narrow it down to a few notables. There are tons of IM apps available with a wide range of prices and quality. But, today we’ll focus on three in particular; two paid apps and one free one. Beejive and IM Plus which are 10 bucks each, and Palringo Lite which is free. All three feature push notification which lets you receive messages when your app is not open on your screen and offers supportive of variety of the accounts. So what's the great about the pricy ones and can you get away with not paying for IM in the iphone? Let’s check it out. Beejive which is pronounce beehive and not bee-jive as I originally thought, gives you very pleasing user interface that kind of mimics that made of SMS feature on your iPhone. So as to chatting it feels like your texting. You can also change settings to list your contacts by groups if you have them. Beejive also gives the option of changing your wallpaper which is kind of fun and makes you feel at home. Chats also fully support hyper links and you can send video, pics and all kinds of media. It really is the champagne of IM apps but how does that compare to its competitor IM Plus. Well, IM Plus does pretty much everything that Beejive does; allowing you to change how you view your accounts. How long you stay logged in up to three days. But the main advantage of IM Plus is that it also features a built in browser which greatly facilitates sending links or media if you're a heavy chat user. You can change your wallpaper and IM plus as well. I'm not in love with the interface and prefer the more seamless static for Beehive. But honestly, they're both pretty damn good. Still not sure if you want to shell out 10 bucks for an IM application? We'll check out the free one when we come back but first. Eileen: Hello everyone! I'm Eileen and welcome into the hot app of the day. Open table for Android is finally available. If you haven't heard of it, it’s a great service to reserve sitting at restaurants. And best of all, the app is free. Now, I've heard mixed reviews, so please let us now if you like it. Now for the iPhone, NAVIGON mobile navigator has announced a live traffic feature. The developers just added text speech and now they even updating. NAVIGON will utilize real time traffic information as well as historic data to calculate better routes that avoid congestion and get drivers to their destination faster. It will be rolled out in North America in October. And for the Blackberry, location based social network Brightkite, just announced it’s first made of Blackberry application. It's called “myKite”. You can download in the Blackberry app world store. And now back to Annie and IM apps for iphone. Annie: And we’re back, so why would you pay 10 bucks for something you can potentially get for free? We’ll, let's take a look at Palringo and see how it stacks up. Like the other guys, Palringo Lite supports a variety IM services and offers push notification. However, Palringo Lite lists your contacts alphabetically and not by account which I personally I found a little disorienting. The way to text look, also feel a little bit 90’s and I prefer the more integrated feel you get with the paid guys. I also noticed the weird little bug ware, one of my contacts showed up not by name but by a random number. So it's a little odd and don't know whose talking to you. So before I give you guys my judgment, let’s do a quick review of our options. Beejive gives you a practically flawless interface that looks exactly like you're native Apple SMS. Allows you to stay logged in for up to seven days and it also supports a whole bunch of languages which is pretty awesome for all you multilingual. It doesn't have a built in browser though and of course it costs money. Also it does not support Skype, so if you are as frequent as Skype user, you may want to take that into consideration. IM Plus supports Skype and also has a built in browser that makes it easy to have a dynamic chat experience. It also supports a variety of languages. However, the user interface, I think is much less pretty than in Beejive. Palringo Lite maybe free, but I found annoying to use and buggy. So if you do plan on using IM frequently and as a workable substitute for texting, I recommend don't download Palringo Lite and do download either Beejive or IM Plus. Beejive is better suited to my needs personally that if for example, you're a Skype user; IM Plus is perfectly good too. Yes, they are 10 bucks each but, you might end up saving on your AT&T bill by IMing instead of texting next month. So I think it will be worth it. Now, there's certainly some stuff we didn’t cover it here, so be sure to check out our show notes for more details on these apps. Or if there other apps you like to see us review, be sure to let us know by e-mail at appjudgment@revision3.com or on twitter at twitter.com/anniegaus. Thanks for watching AppJudgment.