Palringo Instant Messenger Premium

If you’re in the market for an all in-one chat app then you might want to checkout Palringo Instant Messenger Premium.  Created by Palringo Limited, this app not only allows you to connect with your friends on multiple popular chat clients, but it also allows you to send voice or photo messages to your contacts for free!

Let’s face it we all use chat because we’re lazy.  It’s a million times easier to type mindlessly on a computer than it is to pick up a phone and talk.  Well, why not amplify the lazy factor and eliminate typing altogether!  Sending voice messages on Palringo Instant Messenger Premium is really easy.  All you have to do is hold down the audio button while you speak.  When you’re done just let go and the message gets sent to your chat buddy.  How easy is that!  No matter what chat client your friends use they’ll be able to listen to your message.  Sending photo messages is just as easy.  Same process, just press the camera icon, take a pic with your camera or select one from your gallery and send it.

So how did Palringo perform?  Well, overall it’s clear that this is a well designed and executed social networking app.  The interface is clean and logical, it comes with a nice grouping of features, and provides users with a lot of support and “how to” information which is nice.  I found most aspects of the chat functionality to work very well.  However, for whatever reason the push notification feature didn’t appear to work for me.  I also was unable to connect to my Yahoo and Facebook chat accounts despite numerous attempts.  Facebook being the most important one for me.  When I attempted to login to Facebook it essentially was treated as suspicious activity.  When I later went to login to my account from a computer it made me answer a series of security questions and recommended that I change my password.  Even after I confirmed with Facebook that it was a trusted source I was still unable to login.  I can’t say this is something that everyone will experience, but obviously for me this was a less than optimal user experience.

I’m a big fan of the voice chat option that Palringo Instant Messenger Premium provides.  From what I could tell it works very well.  It definitely couldn’t be much easier to create and send than it is.  However, I found that it may take a little trust and coordination for someone on the other end to listen to it.  When you send a voice message a user receives a message to download software.  As convenient and easy as that may be, I sent it to three different people without telling them exactly what it was and all of them elected not to download the software.  So I’d say if you’re looking to use the voice chat option it’s probably a good idea to first tell whomever you’re chatting with what to expect when you send it.  Perhaps if they’re also using Palringo Instant Messenger Premium they can listen to it without downloading any extras, but I wasn’t able to test with another Palringo user so I’m not sure if that’s the case or not.

Overall I like what Palringo Instant Messenger Premium has to offer.  Unfortunately for me I wasn’t able to experience everything the way I would’ve liked to.  Seeing that I was unable to connect to Facebook and the push notification wasn’t working for me I had to doc it a few points.  If you want to try out Palringo minus a few of the bells and whistles that the premium app offers then you should checkout Palringo Instant Messenger.  It’s considered the lite version and is completely free.

Pros:

• Send text, voice, and picture messages to friends on top chat platforms for free
• Includes location + google maps integration so you can see where your friends are
• Includes push notifications so you can be logged into chats even when the app is closed
• Works in both landscape and portrait mode

Cons:

• Facebook treated this app as if it was a hacker trying to access my account
• I was unable to connect to Yahoo and Facebook
• Push notification did not work for me; not sure why

Version Reviewed: 2.9

Requirements: iPhone or iPod Touch; iPhone OS version 3.0 or later

Posted by Ryan Johnson
on 03 22, 2010
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