If you use your phone to keep in touch with friends and family and to be accessible 24/7 like I do, AIM for Windows Mobile is a breath of fresh air. For so long Windows Mobile users have had to choose between paying for a halfway decent IM client or settling for a poor user experience in order to get their instant messages on their cell phone. So when I found out that we were getting ready to release a full version of AIM for free, I just had to get in on the Alpha test.
One of the primary goals of Mobile AIM was to, “bring the full AIM experience to mobile, rather than a scaled-down “mobile” version of AIM,” and I feel that they’ve done just that. Once you log in, you can see your entire buddy list including everyone’s Buddy Icon and emoticons. There is a small ad at the bottom of your buddy list that scrolls out of the frame and doesn’t interfere with the user experience. You also have a “You” bar at the top with your Buddy Icon where you can change your status message very easily.
Once you start chatting on AIM Mobile, a bar comes in on the left to help you keep track of your chat windows. All you have to do is click on your friends’ Buddy Icon or scroll to it and you’re back in the chat window with them. That brings up another really great aspect of the new AIM client- it is fully compatible with Windows Mobile 5 or 6 and the interface is easy to navigate on a Smartphone or Pocket PC, so you can still use it without a touchscreen.
Some of the options aren’t quite ready yet, but I’m told that we’re planning on having options for General IM & Privacy, Buddy List and Sounds and Notifications. It sends you an alert in your message bar that’s just a little AIM icon and will not bug you every time a Buddy logs on or off.
Overall I’m incredibly impressed with the first release of AIM mobile. The experience is on par or better than any of the paid IM clients without the cost. The new client balances extended user functionality, excellent user experience and animations and excellent responsiveness and performance.
In my opinion, this is hands down the best free IM client out there for the Windows Mobile platform. Period. Check out an interview with the Product Manager, Magda Sypula, and screenshots after the jump or download it from AIM and prove me wrong.
Interview with Magda Sypula, Product Manager for AIM Mobile.
- How long have you been working with the AIM Mobile team?
- What were your primary consideration in designing AIM for Windows Mobile?
- How did you balance making the User Interface for both smartphones and Pocket PCs?
- What other features can we expect to see in AIM for Windows Mobile?
- In the last few months we’ve seen native AIM clients released for both Blackberry and now Windows mobile. Can we expect to see AIM clients for an even broader range of handsets?
- Is AOL Mobile cooking up any other releases for 2008?
Although I have been in Telecommunications and Wireless since 2000 I have only been on the AOL Mobile team since this past October.
The goal of AIM for Windows Mobile was to build a premium AIM experience that mimics the desktop experience as much as possible.
That’s actually a great question. When we set out to build this UI, we had the unique task of making one UI work for WinMo 5, 6, touch screen and non-touch screen devices. We wanted to have a consistent experience across those devices but knew that managing the capabilities of the different phones would be difficult. We feel we did a pretty good job of making it all work seamlessly with one download and no porting necessary.
In the near future you can expect to see multicast IMs and Image Transfer support. This will be the first mobile IM application that will support image transfer on the market.
Most feature phones already ship with a multi-headed IM client preloaded on the handset.
We are always improving and launching new things. Recently we launched TMZ on wap.aol.com, and free WAP games
Screenshots
- Palringo Readying Multi-Account IM Client for iPhone
- Palringo: Free Mobile IM Client
- New AIM Express 7 Beta Gets Flashy
[...] to download nor pay a monthly subscription to your mobile carrier to use. The free AIM client is completely ad supported and runs a small ad beneath your buddy list and the bandits at the carriers don’t get a cut [...]
[...] version at Macworld this year. We’re now offering free IM clients for both iPhone and for the Windows Mobile platforms, so that you can access them directly without paying any monthly subscription charges to [...]