Chat and VoIP: Nimbuzz gets tabs, Talkonaut fixes Samsung bugs

Nimbuzz

Chat and VoIP program Nimbuzz does Skype, standard SIP VoIP, GoogleTalk, Jabber, MSN (Windows Live), Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Twitter, Gadu-Gadu, and chat of social networking sites Facebook, MySpace, orkut, and Hyves.

The user interface of Nimbuzz has changed dramatically. The menu button can take a break, because many of its functions have been taken over by tabs. There's a tab or your contacts, a tab for your chats, a tab for your calls, and a tab for messaging. The settings screen is easier to use as well.

The contacts tab sports a "favourites" option which puts your favourite contacts on top of the list. And if you didn't like the ring and message tones that came with Nimbuzz you can replace them with your own tones now. The phone calls tab shows your Skype account name and your Skype credit, and you can now see which VoIP operator is active without having to dive into the settings menu. SIP calls should face less firewall problems, and they consume less battery power too.

If you always use the same internet connection, Nimbuzz lets you set it as default connection method.

The red hangup button doesn't exit Nimbuzz anymore, but sends it to the background so you won't get disconnected from all your networks by accident. The drawback is that you'll have to enter the menu to shut down the program. If you forget this and keep Nimbuzz running you soon find yourself with an empty battery.

The new user interface is an improvement, but it takes some getting used to. Your phone may refuse to "downgrade" if you try to install an old copy on top of the new version. To force the old Nimbuzz back you need to uninstall the new copy first, which means you'll lose your old settings and you'll have to enter them again.

• Nimbuzz


Talkonaut

VoIP and instant messaging client Talkonaut connects to Jabber (including Google Talk), ICQ, MSN, AIM and Yahoo, and you can call with just about every VoIP service that uses the SIP protocol.

Talkonaut won't use your phone's contacts list, and it won't work with Skype. But Talkonaut lets you store multiple SIP VoIP settings, which its competitors Nimbuzz and fring still have to learn.

VoIP calls on Samsung phones were buggy in older versions of Talkonaut, if they worked at all. The latest version fixes this problem.

• Talkonaut