FriendChat: Facebook IM Chat Application For Symbian Mobile Phones

I recently reviewed IM+ an Instant Messaging Application for mobile phones. Although it was an extremely useful mobile IM app and much better than some popular clients like Fring or Nimbuzz. However, it lacked Facebook integration. Being an avid facebook user, i have been searching for a good, dedicated symbian mobile application which can be used as Facebook messenger. FriendChat, developed by Bolser Agency for Nokia, is a dedicated instant messaging application for facebook available for all the Nokia touch phone users (S60v5 and Symbian^3).

FriendChat installs a core application, which has an approximate installation size of 700 KB (and is installed on phone memory), as well as requires QT to be installed on your mobile phone to run. It is basically a QT based symbian application. Once installed you can login to your facebook account by inputting your credentials on the login page, which by the way is the facebook mobile page, and once you are logged in the list of all your friends shows up with the online friends being shown at the top. FriendChat mobile app is neatly organized with 3 tabs viz. Friends,Chats and Settings at the bottom of the screen. The Friends tab shows all your facebook friends with their current status (online or offline) and in order to chat with someone just tap on the friends name and a chat screen will pop up. The Chats tab shows all your current chats going on (NO history) along with any new IM’s (shown in red next to your friend’s name). And the Settings tab allows you to enable/disable sound notifications, remember your facebook credentials, etc.

FriendChat is a great application for the facebook addicts and since it includes smileys, it’s more fun to use the application without getting bored! This being said, functions which I think should have been there in the application but aren’t there are:

1. Ability to minimize the application to background.
2. Custom built login page (rather than fetching the facebook wap page).
3. Kinetic scrolling for S60v5 devices. Currently we need to use the scroll bar, which is a real pain.
4. Ability to change font size in order to squeeze in more on the screen.
5. Allows the application to be installed on memory card instead of phone memory.

Currently FriendChat is available for Symbian^1 (S60v5) and Symbian^3 (N8, etc) running mobile phones, however the developer has plans to add more device. You can download the latest version of FriendChat directly via FriendChat Ovi Store link.