Summary

Nimbuzz 2.0 could very well have been the subject of today’s test, if I hadn’t stumbled upon imo instant messenger a couple of days ago. Give this app a try if you don’t care for VOIP, but still want to chat with Skype.

Imo instant messenger is a multi-messenger that includes all commonly used instant messaging clients. As far as I know, it’s also the only app - besides Nimbuzz and Fring – that let’s you chat via your Skype account. The following chat services are compatable with imo.im:

MSN
Yahoo
AIM / ICQ
Google Talk
My Space
Skype
Facebook

During the test, I tried out Google Talk, Skype and Facebook and they all worked very well. Imo.im may not let you make VOIP calls or send multimedia messages like Nimbuzz, but it’s still one of the only im apps that let’s you chat with Skype.

While testing this app, I came up with two small points of critique that may not seem like such a big deal to most of you. Your friend list is displayed as soon as you log in with an account. To log yourself in with an additional account, you have to go back to the main menu despite the fact that you are already signed into imo.im. At first I found this to be quite confusing, but you get used to it after a while. Just remember that the quickest way to the main menu is via the status bar.
The second problem is that you have re-enter your login for every account every time you start up imo.im. Even this drawback is really a huge pain since you can create a single account that connects all of your im clients together. That way you can log into all of your accounts at once.

Bottom Line:

For those of you that don’t need VOIP capabilities, imo instant messenger may be a good alternative to Fring and Nimbuzz, especially if you chat with Skype. In general, imo.im does a pretty good job as a multimessenger despite all of the minor critique points.


 

When you start up imo.im for the first time and have logged yourself in with an account, you’ll need to go to the main menu via the status bar to adjust your account or settings. It will also show you how many accounts you are using at any given moment.
The main menu options are:

Favorites
Friends
Preferences
Chats
Accounts

You can mark any contact as a favorite and then select them directly from the main menu. All of your contacts are listed under Friends and clicking one of them opens up a chat window. By pressing the menu button you can Show Offline Friends or Add Friend. Inside of a chat window you have these options via the menu button:

End chat
Friend info
Add to favorites
All chats
Block friend

Pressing on More reveals additional options: Delete Friend and Add to Home. The latter option let’s you place a shortcut to a selected contact directly on your homescreen.

Within Preferences in the main menu you can adjust a variety of settings:

• Vibrate (on/off)
• Flashing lights (on/off)
• Sound (on/off)
• Chat history (Save)
• Imo.im in my status (on/off)
• Offline friends (Display)
• Start on boot (on/off)

In Chats you can view a list of all your current conversations. In Accounts you can where you are logged in, but also add additional accounts.

Via the menu button you can press Sign off all or Link these accounts in order to save you the hassle of logging in and out for every account.

Bottom Line:
As far as Screen & Controls are concerned, there wasn’t much to complain about. Obviously, there are multimessengers out there with more options and features, but imo instant messenger works really well and is well-suited for anyone that needs a reliable messenger with Skype Chat included.

imo instant messenger put on a strong performance during our test. It did, however, take a while to log in at times.

imo instant messenger can be downloaded for free from the Android Market.