IM Alternatives for the Nokia E61
Unless you buy your Nokia E61 from a carrier, which also promotes the use of mobile IM, there is no* way of using the built-in IM client. There are IM applications alternative for the Nokia E61 - IM+ and Agile Mobile per a previous post.
However, those applications are not the only IM applications for the Nokia E61. There are other alternatives.
NootMobile is a browser based IM application that just declared Beta. The solution is, understandably, not yet fully baked. There is support for MSN with support for Yahoo and AOL coming. I wasn't terribly impressed with the overall solution. It feels a bit odd to me to use the browser as my IM application. However, it is free and if you really want to IM it is well worth evaluating.
I am more impressed with Nimbuzz (is it just me or aren't these two names a bit wacky 
) Nimbuzz has taken a different approach and offer a free Java client. They support MSN and Googletalk, although I wasn't able to get Googletalk to work. The Nimbuzz client is also in Beta and is, naturally, a bit rough in its present shape.
However, the company behind the client has great aspirations and plan to add voice support in the future. I will be keeping an eye on both of these companies.
*I tried connecting the native IM client to Smartvas and almost made it work. However, Smartvas seems to have disappeard.
Thanks Thimo.
UPDATE:
Talking about Mobile IM, Agile Mobile has been updated and now fixed many of the original bugs on the E61. The new version is a big improvement. Download from here.
September 7th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Talking about Mobile IM, Agile Mobile has been updated and now fixed many of the original bugs on the E61. The new version is a big improvement. Download from their website.
September 7th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Just got the new Agile now Ed
Looks way better and very polished compared to the previous one. Lots of options available also. Great to have you back by the way. Plenty of updates
September 7th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Thanks, it is good to be back. There is so much going on in E-series land
September 7th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
For using the Nokia IM client, try using it with http://www.yamigo.com. They aggregate many IM services (Yahoo, AOL, etc).
September 7th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Thanks for the tip John. Have you successfully used Yamigo with the Nokia E61? I have been trying to set it up on my E61 but haven’t gotten it to work
September 7th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
yup i also prefer the agile messenger. much more polished
September 7th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Hi -
Thanks so much for the tip on the new Agile. It looks great.
Does anyone know if there’s a way to get IM’s to send when you hit the return key?
Thanks!
September 8th, 2006 at 1:42 am
Presumably NootMobile will be good for carriers which only allow port 80 traffic, as this is via a web browser.
Agreed that Agile Messenger is great, though.
September 8th, 2006 at 6:12 am
Hopefully Agile will support the use of alternative ports to get around port blocking at some point.
September 9th, 2006 at 11:23 am
do you think there will ever be an application that will allow you to use AIM with T-Zones?
I know that IM+ works but it wont allow more than 20 or so contacts …. anyone know what the best alternative is ?
September 9th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
I am also unable to connect using yamigo…anyone had any luck…help!
I downloaded agile a while back and loved it but it did an update and now i’m on a 7 day trial. i was going to purchase it anyway but its 29.99usd subscription/year. that seems pretty unreasonable to me for an im client.
September 12th, 2006 at 4:50 am
The Agile Messenger looks like a Java app not a native S60 application. Why they use their own tabs, softkeys, forms instead of the standard S60 UI objects… It’s butt ugly.
September 12th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
OMG someone develop a software that will give us IM Messaging Client for Free! I aint about to pay no $30+ USD on a mobile program…I say give agile a good 2-3months and the name Agile would fade…noone would pay for subscriptions like that…i mean were already paying for the phone bill itself!!!!
September 12th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Hi eastsidebiz,
I agree that it is painful to pay so much for an IM client but I don’t see another (practical ) way around it. In order to connect to the IM communities you have to either plug in through your carriers gateway or through a third party that keeps a server up for this reason.
With IM+ and Agile you do pay but then as a customer you can demand a certain level of service. I think the other alternatives Smartvas Yamigo etc are “weaker” but then again - they’re free.
September 14th, 2006 at 9:18 am
has anyone tried http://www.meebo.com? its a webbased IM which has msn, yahoo, jabber, gtalk. its great on a PC but im wondering if it works on the E61.
anyone tried that yet?
cheers
September 17th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Well I think we all know that since Mobile phones with special functions are growing, 3rd Party Applications would charge money, even to Freewares. But Agile Messenger is Just too much, and its every three months, the best thing to get is a one time payment to QuickIM (quickim.com) I personally think its by far the cheapest, one time payment, and the customer care is an A+.
September 25th, 2006 at 8:40 am
meebo doesn’t seem to work…
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:47 pm
I really like Agile as it displays a notification scrolling bar but I would rather pay a 1 time fee of USD$30 for IM+.
However, on IM+, you cant select notification sound file but you can transfer files/attachments.
On Agile, you can’t transfer files/attachment but you can send voice notes over.
Both apps use a small memory footprint which is good for multi-tasking.
I think i might just buy IM+, though i still really love the UI of Agile…
How?…
October 9th, 2006 at 9:50 am
IM+ is buggy and not really intuitive interface, ver 5.6 has a lot of bugs. I’ll pay $2 a month for Agile becuase he has less problems with encoding and much nicer and just made for people to use.
October 9th, 2006 at 9:53 am
Nimbuzz doesn’t mach my needs, I need icq client and it’s j2me app, so it eat a lof RAM, it’s kind strange to use j2me apps on the Symbian phone.
October 9th, 2006 at 11:48 am
will icq work on IM+
November 28th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
have you guys tried windows live messenger for s60v3 phones?
it’s free but really slow.
November 28th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
X-man,
Post a link to it. Maybe it’s something new we haven’t seen yet.
December 29th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
hi.. the nimbuzz guys took down the d/l link, anyone has a copy? thanks
April 6th, 2007 at 4:56 am
i want to know if i can get yahoo messenger on my e61? i am using HIER for MSN messenger its pretty cool
May 25th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Try fring - http://www.fring.com. Its free, supports Googletalk, MSN, Skype and guess what? - voice too
September 16th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
i was just passing by and… have you guys tried Fring? it’s a multiprotocol voip client and supports ICQ and Jabber chat and some other services too. the reason i’m not using it is when it’s on, all native sounds (calls, sms) are for some reason muted. maybe it’s just my old e61 software version problem.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:40 am
There’s an open source mobile jabber client called bombus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombus_(software)
http://bombus-im.org/wiki/bombus/help_english
the java version can be found here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&langpair=ru%7Cen&u=http://bombus-im.org/index.php%3Fpage%3Ddownload&prev=/translate_s%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dhttp://bombus-im.org/%26sl%3Den%26tl%3Dru
the pocketpc version is here:
http://bombus-im.org/builds/ng/
“It is also possible to interact with proprietary instant messaging networks such as ICQ, Yahoo, .NET Messenger Service or AIM through the use of “transports” (requires server-side support).”
Enjoy!
March 2nd, 2008 at 7:19 am
Hi guys, i tried fring for my e61 IM and it’s simple. I used nimbuzz before but it’s quite complicated. Fring is my top of the list IM.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hi guys, i tried fring for my e61 IM and it’s simple. I used nimbuzz before but it’s quite complicated. Fring is my top of the list IM.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
It is easy to used interact with proprietary instant messaging networks such as ICQ, Yahoo, .NET Messenger Service or AIM through the use of “transports” (requires server-side support).”