Don’t Like The WP7 Messenger App? Go In Browser
The official WP7 MSN Messenger app has a ridiculous 1.5 stars in Marketplace. It’s really a shame because if this was a robust app then it would be the strength of the platform (tie in all forms of chat, and various IM clients like Facebook, add some video support and bam). Anyway, for now it appears to fail hard. The complaints range from an inability to login, frequent crashes, inability to sign in if you’re already logged in on a PC, etc. So it’s actually worse than the Windows Mobile app. So why put up with it? Why not just load Messenger in browser. Just direct your phone to mim.live.com/wlm and you can sign in from there. Obviously, there’s background support since IE has background support. You can sign in to multiple accounts and it’s pretty easy to have multiple conversations at once – there’s actually a decent interface for that. The one problem is that the app doesn’t ping/autorefresh when something happens so you need to sit there like a fool and refresh. Well maybe it does but I’m totally impatient and in testing it I never waited beyond 15 seconds cause I expect IM to be real time. So it’s not perfect at all but considering how bad the native app is, it may be an alternative until they fix it.
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Isn’t this the same app that wasn’t built by M$? Looks like M$ should take the time and do it themselves.
Having a more robust app on your competitor’s platform than your owns is the definition of FAIL! Especially so considering how much potential help this could be to winning people to buy the phones.
@cjc: Yes- MS comissioned them to build this app but my udnerstanding is that this company has made messenger apps for MS for a long time (PC as well). Apparently. messenger is more about the background systems and the content than it is the actual app to MS> It’s so odd to me that a software company (MS) is outsourcing software dev to another company…
Well the WinMo Messenger app sucked as well, so obviously these guys don’t know a thing about mobile apps. Cut them loose already. Hopefully IM+ will fill the gap shortly.
What’s currently in the Marketplace is NOT the official Microsoft MSN Messenger app. If that were the case, then the publisher would be marked as Microsoft, but it isn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft releases the actual chat app in January with its other updates. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the messenger app supported multitasking, unlike what’s currently in the marketplace.
@Alex: It is the official one in marketplace. MS has outsourced it to them. In other words, if MS wants an update they need to contact them. Sucks but it’s true. That company has made the desktop version of IM for MS as well.