MobileChat Review

Today one of my most anticipated application came on the market through the iTunes App Store costing $2.99. The application I speak of is MobileChat and boasts multiple services and feature I want. It has support for AIM, ICQ, .Mac, MobileMe, Live, MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, and XMPP/Jabber and will in the future allow notifications through Apple’s “push” system.

My overall experience with iPhone applications has been very good compared to many people. I have been able to download many applications directly through my iPod Touch successfully with only about 2 or 3 crashes since 2.0 was released.

However after I downloaded MobileChat that changed. The instant I first opened the application it crashed so to I decided to do a full restore of the device. After the restore the problems continued. I tried connecting to my personal Jabber server and the after I sent one message the app crashed. After that initial crash, I have not been able to connect since. The second error I experienced was when I tried to connect to AIM. I received a rather strange message when I attempted to connect to this service. Also notice the obvious UI defect by the progress bar.

I hope an update will appear soon to fix some of these error because this is one app that I would really like to use.

Update: After reinstalling the app I received a message when a relaunched the application.

We have disabled all server while we perform maintenance. Full service is being aimed to be restored by 8AM EST…

I advise everyone to not buy this application at this time. It’s was launched prematurely and is not ready for wide spread release.