Palringo for iPhone 1.2
Our number of iPhone users has been increasing exponentially and we’ve received plenty of positive feedback, so first of all, a big thank you is in order!
We’ve been listening to you (we read every single email and do pop onto the forums and App Store regularly to keep an eye on things).
We even noticed some of you uploading videos on Youtube (see here). Keep them coming!
Whilst we tried not to introduce too many new features and worked more on stability and speed issues, here’s a breakdown of what’s coming in Palringo 1.2.
Smileys
The Mac client has done it for a little while now, and it was time to introduce smileys to Palringo on iPhone… so we’ve added initial support for some basic smileys 
We even made our own interface so you can easily insert smileys while chatting.
History
This is something the other platforms have been able to do for a while, and we’ve finally introduced the history feature to the iPhone – this only works for the Palringo contacts and group chats at the moment (since we do not actually store messages sent from/to MSN/ICQ/Yahoo/etc.), but this should really come in handy if you join in a group and wonder what the conversation was on about.
We are currently working on storing messages on the iPhone itself as well (like other Instant Messengers do) but we do not believe it’s ready for the limelight just yet – this will definitely be coming in version 1.3!
Chinese characters
Some of our Chinese users had issues with Palringo Chinese keyboard autocompletion box being too large and hiding behind the keyboard. We’ve changed the way we do things to make it easier for our Chinese users to handle.
Themes!
We’ve changed our chat bubbles to look a bit more like the ones on the Windows clients, made them larger so they can fit more text, and introduced two new ‘flat’ themes – which should make our users who like the IRC way of doing things happy… Here are the ‘Flat’ and ‘High contrast’ themes!
Stay connected
Now, for up to five minutes after leaving Palringo, our server will keep you connected, which means that for all intents and purposes, all your contacts will see you as online.
Once you get back into Palringo, you will receive any messages sent while you were away.
What do you mean? Five minutes isn’t much? Well, actually this is the first step in keeping you connected while Palringo isn’t running – we want to make sure everything works as expected, and will be increasing this amount of time every so often when we’re confident our servers can handle the load.
We will be using that same feature for Push notifications, watch this space!
Oh, and a nice side-effect of all this, is that when you get back into Palringo, you do not have to download your entire contact list all over again, which means faster reconnections, even over GPRS or EDGE!
Push-To-Talk
We’ve rewritten our Push-To-Talk engine from the ground up to make it more reliable.
Authorising contacts
When someone wants to add you as a contact, you’re given the opportunity to authorise the contact.
Other changes
We introduced a fair few other changes the most remarkable ones being:
- Support for ‘Blocked’ contacts : although the contacts were still blocked and couldn’t see you online, we are now displaying this fact clearly to prevent any confusion.
- We’ve reduced Palringo’s memory footprint, which in our experience now makes using the Camera more reliable (Installing firmware 2.0.2 seems to help, too).
- New animations when switching between chat windows.
- Larger “Text”, “Voice” and “Picture” buttons
- Various stability fixes and speed improvements
And more…!
Has this been submitted to the App Store yet? If not, any idea when it will be?
I understand about the wait period between when you submit it… and when Apple reviews and posts it! Just wondering if it has been SUBMITTED yet
And like everyone, I love this App! Keep up the great work! Hopefully when Apple allows the Push System back into the SDK you guy’s can implement that as well? I hope so!!
Comment made by Josh Hofer on August 21, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
@Josh: We’re in the final stages of tweaking and testing Palringo 1.2 and hope to submit this to the App Store after the weekend.
Comment made by martin on August 22, 2008 @ 12:35 am
I’m so excited about all these new goodies can’t wait for the realese. Just hope all the freezing and crashing bugs get ironed out!
Comment made by almir on August 22, 2008 @ 9:09 am
one of the unique feature available in Win Desktop Live MSN and that is missing in most java based msn is the offline chatting.
In desktop Live MSN, we can chat with offlined buddies. I can’t find such a feature in all mobile MSN including WM6 itself.
it is nice to have.
Another suggestion is that, most of the mobile msn do not retry for a broken connection. Only MSN in WM6 can do this well at this moment.
Furthermore, if Apple SDK allow you to write a daemon based Messenger and separate the UI from the core communication logic, then we can keep our msn online even talking over the phone or using other applications.
I hope that these special feature can be implement in upcoming versions. I think most of the iphone users don’t mind to pay for these.
Comment made by Jim on August 22, 2008 @ 3:16 pm
@martin Excellent news! Looking forward to the release.
Any plans to include the Push system once Apple releases the ability again?
Comment made by Josh Hofer on August 22, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
************IMPRESSED**************
To Palringo,
I just want to say I am so impressed of your hard work, quality, and staying in touch with the community. I am constantly following all of the popular IMs out there at the moment included Mobile Chat v 3.0. While I don’t mean to bash any one or program cause I know it takes countless hours to put together, Palringo is LIGHT YEARS ahead of Mobile Chat at the moment. You guys are constantly improving your app and I’m so positive that once PUSH notifications are implemented in the firmware 2.1, this app is going to be the HOTTEST app on the appstore. There’s no need for an AIM app or even SMS with Palringo.
If you’re a developer for Palringo or even part of their support group, I just want to say THANK YOU for keeping your community informed of your improvments and I look forward to your next release!
maximus808
Comment made by maximus808 on August 23, 2008 @ 8:13 pm
> “Any plans to include the Push system once Apple releases the ability”
Yep – we’re eagerly anticipating Apple’s 2.1 firmware which will allow us to add this functionality.
Comment made by martin on August 25, 2008 @ 2:44 pm
Love the look of the new version, Smiley’s was a nice touch and the themes also look interesting! I just found Palringo today and was surprisingly impressed, I hadn’t been able to find a IM Client for the iPhone that did everything, it seemed every one did it’s own thing but it’s so great to finally have all the features in one! (Not to mention I am in complete love with the ability to send photos easily along with voice clips!)
I’d sure like to be able to have a chat history for AIM & MSN Etc. though, as computer OCD that I am I always like to save certain IM conversations to go through later or to keep the funny parts.
Now if you put THAT feature with Palringo for iPhone. I would never use another Instant Messenger ever again. Any chance that would ever happen?
Looking forward to the Push system, glad to see Apple’s on their toes with that one.
Did I mention how much I am enjoying having an easy to use IM client now? Once again can’t wait for the new release.
Comment made by Lila on August 26, 2008 @ 5:58 am
hmm still no sorting of contacts by groups?
Comment made by Aaron on August 26, 2008 @ 4:15 pm
Great product. Looking forward to v1.2 – Are there any plans to integrate with Office Communicator?
Thanks
Steve
Comment made by steve on August 27, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
hi,
will Palringo be offering an ‘always on’ IM client.
eg. i boot up my iphone, and even though i havnt loaded the app, i will still recieve IM messages and show as online to everyone on my list?
is this available in Palringo now, or will it be arriving soon?
this is what im looking for, ive heard people mention BeeJive (not released yet) which does exactly this, so id like to know if Palringo does, because this app looks cool, nice to look at i must say.
Comment made by chris jackson on August 30, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
If possible, please make the timeout feature user selectable. i.e. 1, 5, 10mins etc.
I am an avid user of Skype chat and voip. Will this be supported anytime soon?
Great app as i am testing now.
Comment made by james on August 31, 2008 @ 5:16 am
Will the ability to change the connection settings be in 1.2? i.e manually set the port
I really want to use Jabber via this App, but our company uses the SSL port 5223
Comment made by Paul on September 3, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
@Paul – Yes you will be able to change the port number in 1.2.
Comment made by alex on September 4, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
version 1.2 cannot show up chinese characters in MSN’s status message? it’s work before in 1.1.x
Comment made by gunsmith on September 7, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
It would be good if you could add a feature so that you can receive voiceclips as well as send them
Comment made by Kirsty on November 11, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
Btw, thanks for the photo sending facility! its great!
Comment made by Kirsty on November 11, 2008 @ 5:02 pm
@Kirsty – you can on the Palringo service
Comment made by alex on November 13, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
[...] est très fluide et relativement intuitive. La version iPhone dispose de smileys (confirmé sur le forum Palringo) que l’on ne retrouve pas sur Windows Mobile (en tout cas pas sous mon HTC Touch Dual en [...]
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