The Iphone Blog

It’s been more than year since Meebo presented the prototype of its instant messaging with push notifications app at an Apple press event, where eyebrows were raised and minds were blown. The big gripe about instant messaging up until that point was the lack of real-time notifications—ahem, instant notifications?—with instant messaging apps because of the iPhone’s inability to run apps in the background. Users had to have their AIM, Yahoo! or MSN Messenger apps opened and running to really get that instant experience.

Meebo’s “ground-breaking” app finally arrived last week, though a bit late in the game to really be as special as it could have been about six months ago. Regardless of the poor timing on Meebo’s part, however, the instant messaging client is definitely something to be admired and talked about, especially as it has one major advantage over its closest competitor in instant messaging with push notifications (Beejive)—it’s FREE.

Check out our full review of Meebo and a rundown of its competitors after the jump.

Before the release of its app, Meebo was more widely known for Meebo.com, the site that allowed you to sign onto your particular IM client, or more than one if you prefer, through an Internet browser. This was well suited to office workers or students in public computer labs looking to work around not having their instant messaging programs handy. It worked well enough, but I always figured it a bit janky in comparison to other sites or services (Gmail has had AIM services through GChat for some time now). But the iPhone app takes things up a notch, presents a clean interface, and lacks the bugs many other IM clients do. I’ll walk you through my experiences with the IM client app.

Getting Started

Once you download the Meebo app, you do have to create a Meebo account, which is quite quick and painless. All the app needs is your e-mail address (one that you can confirm your registration through) and a password, though these will not be needed later when you access the app. Some users are easily annoyed by this step in the process of starting a new app, but it’s well worth it, trust me.

After you confirm your registration via e-mail, you’re well on your way. Meebo allows users to add accounts into the app from more than 100 IM clients, including the more popular ones like AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, and MySpace IM. Tap the account you want to add and enter your user information. You can also choose to connect to this particular account on startup or have this feature turned off.

As far as getting started, that just about covers it. Once you’ve added in all of the accounts you’d like to use, it’s just a matter of managing said accounts and adjusting your settings to your liking. The process is fairly simple, and though many users have complained of crashes or errors in setting up accounts, I never encountering an issue with either.

Accounts / Buddies List

Meebo will sort your buddies by each account buddy list, identifiable by an icon to the right (AIM will have the little yellow man icon, Google Talk will have a bubble, etc.). Your entire list will be imported into your Meebo buddies list, though you can minimize groups of buddies or delete them individually from your Meebo list. However, deleting a buddy from your AIM list on the Meebo app, for example, will not delete the buddy from your original AIM buddy list, in case you just want to keep your buddies in Meebo down to a minimum.

It took me a bit to figure out the process of deleting a buddy, but once I figured it out it was a definite “Oh, duh” moment. Tap the buddy in your list you want to delete, which opens up a chat dialogue window. Toward the top right of the window you see an icon for whichever account this buddy is tied to, which you can tap again to edit your buddy. Here you can not only remove the buddy from your list, but you can also block the buddy and view chat history. If you don’t see a buddy in your list, or your list is just too large to easily locate one, there’s also a search option in the Buddies feature to filter out your friend.

The Buddies feature is set up with a great interface and design. Think: big text, user profile pic thumbnails, note icons for away messages, and a setup that, overall, looks pretty much exactly like Apple’s iChat program. It’s easy to use, incredibly quick to thumb through, and, even better, no ads to stumble over! (Remember: This is a free app. A free app that works. A free app that works with no ads? Wow.)

Chats

Of course, the guts of a good IM client app come down to whether or not chatting works efficiently. I can tell you this: I was completely startled at how quickly my messages reached me in real time. While logged into my various IM clients on my computer and also still signed on through Meebo on my iPhone, an instant message would pop at the exact same time on both my computer and my iPhone. When you have the Meebo app closed, an instant message will pop up as a push notification, just like a text message would, with vibration and sound, as well. The sound for Meebo pushes on my iPhone was different than the sound I had set for text messages, though I found no option to change the sound under Meebo in my Settings app. Not a huge problem, but it would be nice to have the option to change sounds for pushes.

Though unbelievably speedy, there was one strange glitch I found, just with my AIM account. Often when I would start an AIM conversation on my computer, while still signed on to Meebo on my iPhone, my buddy’s response would show up in Meebo but not on my computer. I didn’t run into this issue with Google Talk, but it has been a bit of a recurring issue with AIM, which has led to me simply signing off of Meebo whenever I’ve reached a computer with AIM access for long periods of time.

Glitches aside, the Chats feature is slick, I’ll tell you. Once you start a chat with a buddy, it remains listed in your Chats feature until you’ve “closed” it, which you can do by tapping the “close” button within the chat or with the “edit” button in your chats list, which lets you close multiple chats at once. If you prefer not to close any chats, you can also sort your chats by recent ones. The Chats list will show how many unread messages you have in that chat, along with the latest one received and the name and profile picture of your buddy. It resembles a typical chat program better than any of the IM apps I’ve used, and this is a major advantage for those looking for a no-frills yet usable IM app.

While chatting, you can also switch to landscape mode (this must be turned on in your settings, which can be found under Meebo in your iPhone Settings app), turn on auto-correct and auto-capitalization, timestamp your IMs, and share emoticons (smiley faces) at your discretion. The keyboard is the standard iPhone keyboard with numbers, punctuation, and symbols.

Recap & Conclusion

Price: FREE

Released: Feb. 14, 2010

Our Grade: A

Overall, the chatting and buddy list features from Meebo reign supreme over the other (few) IM client apps that are available. The user interface is slick, easy-to-use, and free of clutter from advertising or silly designs or backgrounds. This app is for IM users looking to get down to business, and do so without paying anything close to the more than $5 that many of the IM clients charge. There are a few minor glitches that will most likely be cleared up through updates, but don’t let that steer you away. I’m certain you won’t be more pleased with another IM client app, especially ones that charge a penny more than this free app does.

So what are these other apps you speak of, EverythingiCafe? Here’s a quick rundown of Meebo’s only competition…and why Meebo is the better choice.

IM+

Price: $4.99

Pros: Has services like Skype, ability to change sounds for alerts/notifications, lets you open and view links sent over instant message within the app without leaving to go Safari, ability to send pics and video over iPhone

Cons: Skype services are limited to one hour, $4.99 seems a bit pricey, can be very buggy with connections and logging in

BeejiveIM with Push

Price: $9.99

Pros: Ability to send and receive photos, files, and voice notes; change sounds for notifications and alerts; link to your iPhone contacts list

Cons: It’s expensive. Very expensive. Also, reviewers have been complaining in droves about troubles connecting after the latest update. Download at your own risk.

eBuddy Pro

Price: $4.99

Pros: Change your profile picture with photos from your iPhone camera roll or library, share images with buddies via chat, cool features like swiping to switch chats or shaking to “send a buzzer”

Cons: Themes are available, but they’re cheesy, at best. The interface also seems a bit clunkier and more cluttered than Meebo’s.

Agile Messenger with Push

Price: $9.99

Pros: Walk and type view (though we don’t recommend texting and walking, for safety reasons), Push to talk feature that allows you to send instant voice messages to buddies (think: walkie talkie)

Cons: The last update was in November 2009, and users have been complaining of major troubles with connecting and logging in. Don’t count on this one to work as well (which was not that well) as it once did.

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