EQO Mobile Rocks The House!
Chris over at EQO skyped me today to let me know that EQO Mobile had arrived. Being the enterprising type, I figured I’d give it a shot.
EQO Mobile gives you the ability to modify the settings for your EQO Me Widget as well as check your messages and such. If you want to see an example of the widget, check out my feedback page. I can manage the messages I receive via this Widget through the app instead of using the WAP browser to do it.
That wouldn’t be a compelling reason to download this app alone, though. What is really cool is the multi-protocol Instant Messaging client. It supports AOL/ICQ, Jabber/Googletalk, MSN, and Yahoo. No Skype functionality as of yet, though they claim it’s coming in a month. The menu layouts are a little strange, and Chris tells me “they’re going to change it.” Hope so because they were slightly confusing and unintuitive.
Aside from that, the IM client works pretty well. You can see your buddies on the various networks, send them messages, and so on. You can also maintain multiple conversations at once and keep them separate.
EQO seems to have learned some lessons on their Skype-based client and have improved the overall client quite a bit while increasing phone compatibility. The client, overall, is better than some beta or released clients I’ve seen out there. Excellent work! But, of course, I have suggestions. Sorry, Chris, I have to do my part to keep the developers busy. 
- Sound notifications on incoming IM, namely that there isn’t none.
- The ability to cause the Nokia E61/E62 to “flash” on an incoming message. If you have one of these phones, you know what I mean.
- Color-code the name of the person and their text so it’s easier to see.
- Add support for the “typing” indicator that most networks offer.
- Add the ability to hide offline users.
- Add the ability to sport a “combined” buddy list using the groups defined on the server(s) instead of separating it out by IM identity.
- Add the ability to “always appear invisible” to a specific contact (this is IM-network dependent).
- Add auto-away support (automatically set your status to “Away” after X minutes)
- Add Skype support!
- Make the menus better.
As I said, for Alpha code, this is pretty good stuff–if you’re into IM. I have a feeling this client will have more behind it later on and I look forward to giving it a try.
