Michal Ždanský As far as IM clients go, it's never been a hit on the iPad. While many are still waiting for a tablet version of Meebo, which is one of the best clients for the iPhone, several contenders have appeared in that time, among them Imo.im. It can be said without hyperbole that he is the one-eyed king among the blind.
If we summarize multi-protocol IM clients for iPad, in addition to Imo.im, we have two other relatively promising applications - IM+ and Beejive. However, while Beejive does not support one of the most popular protocols in our country, ICQ, IM+ is full of bugs and unfinished business, and chatting on both of them is far from the experience we would imagine.
Imo.im also had a rough start. The biggest complaint was mainly the errors that the application was full of. Disappearing accounts, constant logouts, Imo.im suffered from it all. However, with successive updates, the application reached the stage where it became a very usable client, which eventually surpassed the competition. It works great and looks great too, although it could certainly use a minor facelift.
Imo.im is a multi-protocol client supporting most popular protocols: AOL/ICQ, Facebook, Gtalk, Skype, MSN, Skype, Jabber, Yahoo! MySpace, Hyves, gaming Steam or Russian VKontakte. Given the closed Skype protocol, I was surprised by its support, although there are other clients that offer chatting within Skype. I tried the 4 protocols that I use myself and everything went great. Messages arrived on time, none were lost, and I didn't experience any accidental disconnections.
However, logging in is solved in a rather confusing way. While there is an option to log out of all logs at once, we would expect it to be in the availability change menu as "Offline". With Imo.im, the process is via the red button Sign out in the accounts tab. When logging in, you only need to activate a single account and all the ones you have logged in to in the past will be activated, because the Imo.im server remembers which protocols are linked to each other. At least availability (available, unavailable, invisible) or text status can be set en masse. The application can automatically add a line to the status that you are logged in on the iPad and also change the availability to "Away" after a certain period of inactivity.
The layout is very simple, in the left part there is a chat window similar to the one you know from News, in the right part there is a column with a list of contacts divided by protocol, however, offline contacts have a collective group. You switch individual conversation windows to the upper tab bar and close them with the X button on the bar below it. The space for writing messages is also strikingly similar to the SMS application, although the font in the small window is unnecessarily large, and in the case of longer text, it creates one long "noodle" instead of wrapping the text into several lines. However, this only applies to the window where you are writing, the text wraps normally in the conversation.
There is also a button for inserting emoticons, and on the left you will also find the option to send recordings. You can send recorded audio within a conversation, but the other party must have the same client. If it doesn't have one, the recording will probably be sent as an audio file, if that protocol supports file transfers. You can send pictures regularly, either from the library, or you can take a picture of them directly.
Of course, the application also supports push notifications. Their reliability is at a high level, as a rule, the notification comes within a few seconds at the most after receiving the message regardless of the protocol (at least the ones tested). After opening the application again, the connection is established relatively quickly, even within seconds at the most, which is for example one of the Achilles heel of IM+, where the connection often takes an unreasonably long time.
Although the functional side of the application is great, it still has considerable reserves after the appearance side. While you can choose from several different color themes, the only usable one is the default blue, the others look unapologetically awful. Dressing Imo.im in a new, nice and modern graphic jacket, this application would be unrivaled in its category. However, Imo.im is developed for free, so it is a question whether the authors can even afford a good graphic designer. Many users would certainly like to pay extra for a nice application.
Despite this, this is probably the best multi-protocol IM client for the iPad, although the reason for this position is more in the poor current selection of IM applications in the App Store. So let's hope that the developers will play around with the app even at the price of charging. The app is also available separately for iPad.
[button color=red link=http://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/imo-instant-messenger/id336435697 target=““]imo.im (iPhone) – Free[/button] [button color=red link=http://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/imo-instant-messenger-for/id405179691 target=““]imo.im (iPad) – Free[/button]
I don't want to dig, but IM+ works on my iPad without the slightest problem. When I read here that all accounts are activated if I activate one... well, I don't know, I probably wouldn't give it :-)
Only those for which you are logged in are activated. With IM+ it works the same, it just looks different. With Im+, it often happened to me that some notifications did not go through or it took a very long time to restore the connection after closing the application
I would also point out that the login data is stored on the developer's server, which is not exactly a great solution from the point of view of security.
I used imo.im for a while, then I got tired of the fact that it kept telling me that the connection was lost, even though I always had a full wifi signal and the internet was fine
then I switched to IM+ Pro and no problems with it
I tried imo, but the design of the app is terrible. What is still important for me is the connection with the address book and groupchat support. The only client that has managed this best is Beejive.
With im pro + now I think even for a euro, it's cool, reliable, doesn't cause me any problems, I use it on skype and icq
When it refused to log me into ICQ 10 times, I threw it away, it's a class less disgusting than IM+, but at least it works, it's just a shame that it doesn't support Steam.
IM+ without problems now the Pro version for us at a discount and cool.
I'm using Trillian and I can't complain, everything goes smoothly… ;)
hello, I have the following problem with this application, my friend sent me an audio message via imo, but when playing it, the sound cannot be muted except by putting the mt 'into headphones'.. on the mt phone, the volume mute simply does not work and the volume is turned from minimum to maximum even though it is muted .thanks for the reply
ps: I have mt SExperia miniPro10
I don't know how you do it, but im+ drops easily ten times a day. Sometimes I'm just writing and suddenly it turns off and everything is gone..
Really imo is really the best! IM+ was crashing and especially before he read the received messages he was shaken...