Nokia killed Symbian. Many links to Symbian apps on this site have expired. Check out Android Underground.



Wednesday 19 November 2008

Nimbuzz got better, fring got ads

Nimbuzz fring SIP VoIP Skype chat instant messaging messenger
Nimbuzz and fring are multi-network instant messengers, Skype, and SIP VoIP clients for Symbian mobile phones. Nimbuzz sports better sound quality, but appears to drain your battery a bit faster than fring, which has a somewhat nicer looking interface.

Nimbuzz didn't make much noise when they released version 1.01 of their program.

New in Nimbuzz v1.01: Facebook chat, MySpace chat, offline chat, the red button doesn't close the application in a conference call anymore, and closing a chat window clears the chat edit box (so you don't have to clear it yourself if you have multiple chats running). They also fixed a few a minor bugs.

The last fring update is a while ago. The program has grown a lot bigger without any noticable increase in functions. But...

...fring is turning into adware. The company behind fring is experimenting with displaying ads right inside the chat windows. Yuck! So far only "a small number of randomly selected fringsters" (source: the fring blog) has to suffer this annoyance, but it seems sooner or later everyone will have to deal with advertisements or switch to the competition.

Nimbuzz is the obvious alternative for fring refugees.

Nimbuzz
fring
Update: fring is no longer a multi-network messenger. They kicked 'em all out, fring now only works on it's own fring network. My advice: don't use fring.

If you don't like fring or Nimbuzz:
Talkonaut (Talkonaut doesn't do Skype)


4 comments:

Unknown said...

Think you got fring and Nimbuzz confused there. Nimbuzz used to be awesome-it worked with everything. They have started putting ads in the chat windows and screwed up the interface. Im back to fring now, even though I cant get facebook to work on it.....

android underground said...

This blog entry is 7.5 months old, way before Nimbuzz changed their interface. It didn't have any ads then either.

I've never seen any ad in Nimbuzz yet, so maybe they only show it for some countries?

Unknown said...

I tried both of them and things I like about Nimbuzz is you can see which community your friend is on (Fring only displays it's own Fring icon), Nimbuzz got this great buzz function and Nimbuzz is also available for pc. On the other hand Fring seems the set up a better sip connections with less delay as Nimbuzz has. Haven't seen any ads on Nimbuzz yet.

jamierooney said...

there are NO ads on Nimbuzz - @ROBIN - think 'you' got the 2 confused there mate.