iPhone Supported Instant Messaging Services

One of the loudest complaints about the iPhone is the absence of built-in instant messaging capabilities. This may change in the future, but the public approach of web-based applications filling the 3rd party application void raises the question: will my favorite web-based instant messaging application work with the iPhone?

The short answer as of June 28th is, “we don’t know!” In fact, perusing blog posts of web-based IM services suggests that none of them have had their hands on an iPhone to test them yet and will have to wait for iDay to find out. Some services we know now won’t work, notably Yahoo! Messenger for the Web which uses Flash and mabber which uses Java. Other services are known to work in Safari. Will they play on an iPhone? We’ll find out. I’ll keep the chart below updated as each service is tested.

Provider	AIM	Google Talk	Jabber	Yahoo!	MSN	ICQ
FlickIM
BeeJive Jive Talk
iPhone Chat
Meebo
Google Talk
eBuddy
AIM Express
Yahoo! Mesenger for Web
MSN Web Messenger
Kool IM
radius IM
I Love IM
Snimmer
IMUnitivie
Messenger FX
	Key:	– Supported
		– Not supported
		– Untested

General tips: Most web-based instant messaging applications launch pop-up windows as part of their normal function. The iPhone browser has pop-ups blocked by default. To enable pop-ups (not a big deal since it will still ask you to confirm each new popup before opening), follow these taps: Home screen -> Settings -> Safari and tap or slide the switch next to Block Pop-ups. Also, there are security issues with using online instant messaging clients since you are giving them your login and password that likely access systems other than instant messaging.

iPhone Chat is written specifically for the iPhone and, while it is the prettiest and most iPhone-friendly AIM interface at the moment, it does have some issues. There is a 10 minute limit on sessions (which I understand because I know that it’s a mean server load). More limiting is the interface when chat sessions fill the screen. Although there is a scrollbar in that pane when using non-iPhone Safari, the scrollbar is missing on the iPhone making it difficult to use. The application is beautiful with a clever means of switching between chat sessions (small colored squares for each, although the user’s icon would be an improvement) and easy access to the buddy list. If the message pane scrolling issue is resolved, it will be the best of the bunch.

Yahoo! Messenger for the Web, while touting “from any browser. anywhere.â€? uses Flash which the iPhone doesn’t.

Google Talk as a potential web-based client is out of the list. Once signed in, Flash is required.

eBuddy’s mobile site does work with the iPhone, although using it is rather difficult since each page reload rescales the page to it’s wee-est and requires a rescaling each time to be able to see it. Chances are they can easily address this to make it more iPhone friendly and I’ll update this information when they do. eBuddy’s main service does not yet support Safari, so it is out.

I had played with Meebo quite a bit on Saturday and I was able to login once, but the experience was torture. Oh, and not being able to send messages was a bit of a drag. I’m putting it into the Not Supported category although as the Joshmeister pointed out, they have expressed interest in making it work with the iPhone. I think this will be great and when they get it working, I believe it will be a strong combination. UPDATED: 7/3/07: Thanks for the heads up in the comments, Meebo has improved their support for the iPhone and I just tested it out. It works quite well, actually, although don’t try it in landscape mode.

Kool IM is also in the Not Supported list since even login appears to be impossible. Has anyone else been able to get data into their forms?

AIM Express is also confirmed not to work. I was able to login and I was able to see the top of my contacts list, but I was unable to scroll through them. When attempting to IM a contact that was visible, I got a Javascript error. Brian McNitt also saw a Javascript error as mentioned in his comment below.

Snimmer allowed me to login, but I was unable to see my contacts or send messages.

RadiusIM also allowed the login, but didn’t allow messaging through the iPhone. The layout of the page would not work well on the iPhone even if it worked.

ILoveIM is the first IM web client that I would say works pretty well on the iPhone. The size of the window it opens requires a little scrolling up and down, although once a conversation gets going, the active content will be down near the text entry field. Receiving messages through the interface is fast. While ILoveIM worked for AIM, I had problems with it using Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. I was able to login and see my contacts, but my clicks on them had no effect as they did with AIM. Since there is no right-click functionality in the iPhone Safari, this may limit the capabilities of ILoveIM on the iPhone.

MSN Web Messenger was an easy one to exclude as non-functional from the message on the landing page: Your web browser is not supported by this version of MSN Web Messenger. Probably no urgency in changing that, either.

Easy messenger worked as I recall when I put it on the list last week before the iPhone release date, but when I try to connect now it gives a timeout. I’ll leave it on the list for a while and keep checking on it.

IMUnitive provides a pretty blue screen but nothing else.

Updated 7/2/07: Thanks for all the comments. If anyone knows of other web-based instant messaging services or has noticed different results with one of the messaging services listed above, please leave a comment!

Updated 7/9/07: Just added iPhone.BeeJive.com, the new iPhone-compatible Jive Talk application. It’s more like what a native iPhone chat client should be than anything else on the list. It’s in an alpha stage at this point, so connections are intermittenly odd, but when it works, it works beautifully. It’s proudly sitting at the top of this list for now.

Updated 7/18/07: Added FlickIM ( http://flickim.com ) which is a great iPhone AIM client.  It fits the iPhone user experience and also supports sending youtube video or movie trailers to other iPhone users.  The interface is simple and quite resilient, more so than other services I’ve tried.  If you use AIM, give FlickIM a try.