The popular cross-platform IM app Nimbuzz is now available on the Windows Phone, for the surprisingly low cost of nothing. It’s been in existence since the Windows Mobile days, and is available on a wide sleuth of platforms: Android, iOS, Symbian, Blackberry, Java, PC, Mac, and of course, Windows Phone. The app allows you to chat with other Nimbuzz users, as well as friends on Facebook, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, and WLM for free. Some form of Twitter integration is also baked into the app.
On top of text-based IM, you can also make free voice and video calls to other Nimbuzz users, share pictures, view your chat history if you’d like, use their popular chat buddies, contact management, presence management, message typing indicator, N-world, free avatars and more.
What’s the verdict of the very first release of the Windows Phone app? People note in Marketplace reviews that, while the app is nicely designed, they have been experiencing a bit of lag when using it. Bugs aside – they will surely be fixed quite soon in future incremental releases – though, if you have plenty of friends on Nimbuzz or just want a nice, well-designed IM app, this is worth a look.
If you don’t like Nimbuzz, what other IM app options do you have on Windows Phone? Well, if you just need Live Messenger and Facebook chat support, then you won’t have to look beyond the OS’ own native Messaging capabilities. Support for these IM services are already pretty much included on the device, on top of SMS. However, if you don’t like the proprietary IM support, or use other IM services, then other popular and highly-rated third-party chat clients include IM+ and Kik Messenger. There are also a few dedicated – but unofficial – clients for certain chat services that have decent Marketplace ratings, such as QuickYM (Yahoo Messenger) and Gchat.
While they may not come with as many "features" as Nimbuzz, they are also pretty solid. Like most chat clients – official or not (I’m looking at you, Windows Live Messenger), Nimbuzz seems to be pretty bloated anyways; I mean seriously, free avatars? Yikes.
Nimbuzz for Windows Phone can be downloaded from WP Marketplace.
(via WMPowerUser)
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