Palringo - Chat and PTT for Free!
Palringo calls it “Vocal Instant Messaging” - I call it pretty damn cool! Palringo is a free app (currently in beta) for your mobile that provides you with presence, chat, and PTT functionality for S60 devices. Afraid that you don’t know enough S60 3rd users to make this app useful? Well there are also Win Mobile/Win2K/WinXP/Vista versions available and a java version in the works!
Palringo loads quite quickly and occupies a reasonable amount of RAM on your S60 3rd device. Once you open the app and enter your credentials (first time only) you may log in using a GPRS, EDGE, 3G, or WiFi connection. Your presence is immediately broadcast to your contacts once you log in and you are brought to your home screen where things like status and messages are displayed.
Moving over to the contacts tab, you will see a list of all of your contacts with their current availability status (and conveniently the customer service contact is listed there as well). Contacts are listed and added using a full email address. You can however, create a nickname that your contacts will see in place of your email.
To start a new chat session simply scroll to one of your contacts and click options to access chat. Chat works just as it should and it updates new messages VERY quickly.
At the top of the screen above, you will see three tabs. The current screen is the text chat tab but my favorite is the second tab - the “vocal instant messaging” tab. This is essentially PTT (walkie-talkie) that is delivered in near-real time. Simply hold down the joystick fire key and speak, then release the key when you’re done and your vocal instant message will be played for your contact almost instantly!
The third tab is for picture messaging where the app allows you to take a pic (from within the UI!) and instantly deliver it to your contact. Your contact can reply with chat, image, or vocal instant messages in the exact same way. There currently is no support for group chatting/PTT but perhaps we might see some group support in the future. UPDATE: Please see Etienne’s comment below regarding groups. I was in a bit of a rush as I posted this - lol My bad ;)
To be honest, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen this app before. Granted it’s in beta but it’s very stable and I LOVE that it works across so many platforms (Symbian, Win Mobile, Win2k/XP/Vista). Once a java app is released this is going to be one of the most accessible and versatile communications apps around! Definitely worth checking out… :)
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