my 2 cent "First impression" review...
I was very eagerly awaiting Beejive – as a former user of it when it was still Jivetalk on the BB I was excited when I found out they’d be releasing a native app. Up until the latest revisions of Palringo I also used the Beejive webapp as my main for of IM’ing. (I jumped all over MobileChat when it came out and it’s the only app I‘ve paid for and deleted off my iPhone – its useless.)
Anyway – Beejive is very stable. I know its only been a day (if even) but it hasn’t crashed, frozen or kicked me out (yet). While I do love Palringo, occasionally it did knock me off... Not often, but enough that I know it wasn’t an isolated issue.
The ability to customize how long you stay connected for is great – that to me is worth the price. Palringo is great and they seem VERY responsive to their customers which is amazing for a free app, but the 15 minutes doesn’t seem long enough. I have Beejive set to 4 hours and that’s perfect. (and there is more if I need it!)
I like the flexibility of Beejive, you can add/remove/edit contacts, keep a separate favorites list and send SMSes – I don’t believe those features are available on any of the other apps. One other thing I love (which others may not care about) is the option to view contacts by account. This was one of those features I never would have thought I needed, but I like.. It really helps in cleaning up your buddy lists without having to sign off/on to see if you have someone added to multiple accounts.
The chat interface is very nice and clean, I do have some recommendations about it which I’ll list below – but it’s still very useful. I do like that it shows whether or not an online contact is mobile (Palringo doesn’t do this yet, but I believe I saw they will in a future release) and it shows you the service they are on.
The Pop-up screen for typing takes some getting used to. Palringo and Beejive the Web-client use a small text box above the keyboard, while I'm used to that it quite content with it this is different - not bad, just different. I'm sure in a week I'll be so used to it and it'll be just as naturla as the "old" way.
I don’t really have any negative things to say – nothing really bothers me with it, but I do have some recommendations or suggestions for features I’d like to see implemented to make this really an ideal app (for me at least, and hopefully for some others):
1) Offer the ability to hide the Buddy Icons.. it just takes up too much space on the screen. Most of my buddies don’t have them (or have generic ones) – If I really wanted to see them I could check the account info screen. (and its also available within the Chat Window, so its almost redundant.
2) Offer a minimized view... By removing the icons and then maybe condensing the on-screen info to 2 lines you’d be able to get more names on at once. Maybe even make the font size a little smaller in the chat window when texting. As for the buddy list right now it uses this format:
Steve Jobs (Nickname)
SteveJRules (Screenname)
I’m away counting my money (Status)
I'd prefer an option to have it minimized theme to display:
Nickname
Status
3) Include email notifications for the accounts associated w/ an email address. I’m not sure if this is do-able based on App Store limitations, but I know many desktop chat apps will give you the option to be notified if an email gets sent to one of your accounts – this would be great to incorporate. I don’t use the email accounts associated w/ all of my chat apps regularly and don’t have them set up on the iPhone, but if I got something it would be nice to be notified without having to go and check. (This is sort of an added benefit, I know its not part of IM functionality but I’m so used to it with my desktop apps, having something like that would really make me think twice about having the need to log into my desktop!) Also, I like to keep my phone on silent all day at work – if I keep Beejive open and I get a real email I don’t know about it - I have to close out periodically to check…
4) IM notification badge on the icon. Palringo just added this – it would be a nice feature and save me the few minutes from signing in to check if theres anything waiting. (I don’t use the email push notifications)
Overall I’m pleased with the app. To me, it’s worth the price. I paid more to have it on my BB and it’s a company I trust. Hopefully they are responsive to customer feedback as I’ll be sending the recommendations above to them. (I tried to participate in their beta program but since I didn’t have beta experience I didn’t make the cut).
Anyway – that’s my first impression…
