Review: Palringo Multi-IM Client for the Blackberry (Page 2 of 2)

Review of Palringo by mrmonaco (747 pts ) , published Mar 3, 2009

Support:

In my option, support is pretty poor, and doesn't even provide any manuals or guides. The company mainly points you to the forums where it is divided into platforms (Blackberry, PC, etc), where you would expect a wealth of community insight, but not in this case. The actual forum for this phone was fairly non-existent compared to other sites (only three pages of threads).

According to the forums, there are known compatibility issues, and your experience with this product can very depending on what model you have (even on newer phones like the Pearl). Here is a thread to serves as a good example.

User Feedback:

In fact, according to some users, it doesn't even show new message indicators like other Blackberry applications do. Instead, it uses a flashing icon on your home screen, which may not work for most people using themes such as Zen on the phones running the newer Operating Systems.

I also investigated another complaint that the phone uses a loud, annoying, and non-customizable alert sound. Without having a functional client, I cannot confirm the actual sound or volume, but I can tell you that no option exists in your phone profiles (unlike other IM clients), which does not allow for customization.

Finally, some users are reporting that online statuses on either end are not showing up correctly, and their contact lists have many duplicate entries for the same client.

All of the above, do not lead me to want to use this product or even recommend it to a friend.

The Verdict:

I cannot recommend this product since the end user experience can very greatly on this product. They need to implement a check on the installer site that will not allow you to install the client on Blackberry phones that are known to be incompatible.

Has anyone else used this product? Did you have a good or bad experience? I'd love to hear from you.

I'll probably give them a second chance and re-review this product after they got all of the bugs sorted out. However, it doesn't look terribly hopeful as that particular thread was started in 2008 (not including other threads that were even older than that one) and has not received any updates in 2009.

Comment

Jul 24, 2009 5:07 PM
Joel
Facebook Chat
The Facebook chat is another issue. It's probably the most attractive feature, and still it doesn't work. You can send just fine, but you will receive no response. I tested this myself by IMing someone while being on the computer at the same time. Response on the computer (both browser and Digsby), no response on the BlackBerry.
 
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