Specifically, Slick lets you connect and communicate with friends on ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM and MSN Messenger. Besides just sending and receiving messages you can also add emoticons (not enough to choose from for my liking though), change your status and add new contacts.

Slick's interface is not too taxing to find your way around and owes much of its design to the popular IM clients. Thankfully, it also brings with it some of the more advanced features of these clients too, including the ability to share files, view chat history, and set up all manner of alerts.

If you're looking for a no-nonsense way of chatting with your IM contacts on the bus then Slick provides a, well, slick, means of doing so.

Download Slick 0.72 (S60 3rd) in Softonic

When I was a boy, the only way of getting in touch with someone was to phone them up, write them a letter, or go to their house. These days though, there are countless different new ways to communicate thanks to email, instant messaging, VoIP, social networks, and the like.

This is great, but it does pose problems in that it's often difficult to work out the best way to reach someone. You might have separate buddy lists for Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo!, MSN, and Facebook, and constantly logging in, launching apps and finding your online pals can be a real chore. fring is designed to change all that, providing you with a single platform, based on your mobile, where all of your online friends are available in one place.

fring supports most of the major chat services including Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo!, and AIM. You can also use the program to check Facebook updates, view Twitter feeds, and even listen to music with friends on Last.fm.

Smooth set-up

The application is simple to install and set up. Once you've registered for a fring account you can import your online contacts very easily. You just go to the 'Add-ons' section, click a service you want to access (e.g. Skype, Yahoo!) and sign in using your normal log-in for that account. The contacts are automatically pulled into fring and displayed in the main window, and you can quickly view who is online and who isn't.

Not only can you chat via instant messages but fring also lets you make cheap or free calls to your buddies via SkypeOut/SkypeIn. This means you can ring people from your phone's contacts locally or internationally, at vastly reduced rates. Of course, you'll need to be in a WiFi hotspot for this to be of any benefit but thankfully, fring comes with a tool for automatically logging you into your favorite hotspots.

Other functions

There are a few extra chat features of note within fring, such as file transfer and a history view. However, its functionality is still vastly inferior to what you'd expect from most of the chat services themselves. For instance, there are no emoticons, games, etc.

One great thing about the latest version of fring is that it now introduces video calling. This is only presently available on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 devices, but it's an excellent feature and very easy to use. You just click the Video call in the Call menu and you'll be able to teleconference with the person you're calling. Of course, you will only see them if they are running fring on a supported device, but it's great fun and the streaming quality is pretty smooth (although, obviously the quality depends on the phone you're using).

This latest version of fring integrates Facebook and Twitter 2.0 support. The Facebook feature permits you to do a lot of the things you can do on Facebook (send messages, browse statuses, view photos, etc.), via a condensed interface built into fring. Unfortunately, the Facebook section can be painfully slow at times. It's a shame too, that there's no integration with Facebook chat. It would've been nice to have your Facebook contacts who are online show up in your list of fring contacts.

Overall though, fring makes for a great way to manage all of your contacts on all of your networks from one, easy-to-use application.

Download fring 4.5.17 in Softonic

When I was a boy, the only way of getting in touch with someone was to phone them up, write them a letter, or go to their house. These days though, there are countless different new ways to communicate thanks to email, instant messaging, VoIP, social networks, and the like.

This is great, but it does pose problems in that it's often difficult to work out the best way to reach someone. You might have separate buddy lists for Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo!, MSN, and Facebook, and constantly logging in, launching apps and finding your online pals can be a real chore. fring is designed to change all that, providing you with a single platform, based on your mobile, where all of your online friends are available in one place.

fring supports most of the major chat services including Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo!, and AIM. You can also use the program to check Facebook updates, view Twitter feeds, and even listen to music with friends on Last.fm.

Smooth set-up

The application is simple to install and set up. Once you've registered for a fring account you can import your online contacts very easily. You just go to the 'Add-ons' section, click a service you want to access (e.g. Skype, Yahoo!) and sign in using your normal log-in for that account. The contacts are automatically pulled into fring and displayed in the main window, and you can quickly view who is online and who isn't.

Not only can you chat via instant messages but fring also lets you make cheap or free calls to your buddies via SkypeOut/SkypeIn. This means you can ring people from your phone's contacts locally or internationally, at vastly reduced rates. Of course, you'll need to be in a WiFi hotspot for this to be of any benefit but thankfully, fring comes with a tool for automatically logging you into your favorite hotspots.

Other functions

There are a few extra chat features of note within fring, such as file transfer and a history view. However, its functionality is still vastly inferior to what you'd expect from most of the chat services themselves. For instance, there are no emoticons, games, etc.

One great thing about the latest version of fring is that it now introduces video calling. This is an excellent feature and very easy to use. You just click the Video call in the Call menu and you'll be able to teleconference with the person you're calling. Of course, you will only see them if they are running fring on a supported device, but it's great fun and the streaming quality is pretty smooth (although, obviously the quality depends on the phone you're using).

This latest version of fring integrates Facebook and Twitter 2.0 support. The Facebook feature permits you to do a lot of the things you can do on Facebook (send messages, browse statuses, view photos, etc.), via a condensed interface built into fring. Unfortunately, the Facebook section can be painfully slow at times. It's a shame too, that there's no integration with Facebook chat. It would've been nice to have your Facebook contacts who are online show up in your list of fring contacts.

Overall though, fring makes for a great way to manage all of your contacts on all of your networks from one, easy-to-use application.

Download fring 4.5.17 (S60 5th) in Softonic

Mobile instant messaging applications are quickly beginning to seem like Sudoku games: lots of them around and they’re all more or less the same. That said, they remain very popular and useful programs which are often at the forefront of the convergence trend just beginning to sweep the mobile communications industry.

YehBA* Instant Messenger is one of the new kids on the mobile IM block. It’s a well designed, compact option for those who want a chat program compatible with their phone yet without any of the extra bells and whistles now common in other clients. Its interface is original, if a little cutesy, and we found it adequately easy to use.

Setting up YehBA* was as simple as we’ve ever seen on a mobile IM program. The program has a built in ‘wizard’ which checks all your connection settings prior to launching the service. This is a run-once feature and it sets up your account with YehBA* as well as leading you through the account setup process for your MSN and/or Yahoo IM accounts – all with a cute cartoon of a wizard in the background. Nice.

Once up and running, there’s not much to choose from between YehBA* and the majority of its competitors in the IM market. Your options are simple: add or remove chat accounts, check your contacts list, communicate with buddies. The methods for communication extend beyond simple chatting, with ‘Call’ and ‘SMS’ included as options, However, seeing as these features don’t seem to have been implemented properly yet, we couldn’t gauge their eventual functionality. We figured that none of our contacts had the proper information entered into their MSN profiles but still… a little guidance would have been handy.

This is one of the areas where YehBA* starts to fall short of other clients we’ve tried in the past couple of months: its level of built-in help and advice is pretty low and it barely seems to offer support for features it boldly claims to offer. For example, setting a Google Talk account is supported by YehBA*. However, to realise this, you’ve got to know that Google Talk is based on Jabber and you’ll need to check Google’s homepage for the correct server settings to get your chat up and running – not something you’ll be able to do if you’re already out and about.

In some ways, this omission is understandable – there are, after all, a multitude of chat services out there and YehBA* can’t offer automatic setup for all of them. However, there are also plenty of chat clients out there that do offer a quick setup process for Google Talk – so why should we choose YehBA* over them?

The answer is that if all we’re looking for is a simple way to chat with MSN or Yahoo buddies while away from a computer, this is a perfectly robust option. You can communicate with your contacts or send them pictures from your phone – and that’s about it. Other much-lauded features, such as ‘blogging’ and chat rooms seemed potentially popular but essentially useless. We should also add that the program crashed once – not a particularly rare occurrence for a mobile application but annoying nonetheless.

YehBA* Instant Messenger is, on balance, a mostly stable and reliable IM program with good support for its basic features and not much else. If all you’re looking for is a way to chat with buddies from MSN or Yahoo! Messenger then this program is a perfectly decent choice. If, however, you’re looking for a program which offers advanced features, VoIP calls, or any other more advanced features, YehBA* isn’t the program for you.

Download YehBA* Instant Messenger 1.0.6 o in Softonic

IM+ Mobile Instant Messenger supports the most popular instant messaging systems: AOL, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber, and Google Talk. It allows the always-on exchange of instant messages easily, cost-effectively and in real-time.

IM+ users can use the same accounts on mobile devices and PC regardless of changing mobile operator - it's very convenient for using in business trips.

Benefits:

• ICQ, AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber and Google Talk in one application
• Simultaneous work with all IM systems
• Unlimited IM, no cost per message, only standard payment for wireless data transfer

Main features include:

• IM+ makes direct connection to the supported services, without any "gate" in the middle
• Contact list management functions, including facilities to add a new contact, to delete a contact and to change nick of a contact
• IM+ keeps the contact list information on the respective servers. So, IM+ and your convenient desktop client always use just the same contact list. You can add new user in your contact list with IM+ and you will see this user with next connection with your desktop client
• Multiple Code Pages support: You can exchange messages in any language installed on your phone
• Full presence status support
• Three-level zoom for contact list and dialogs
• Custom dialog layout configuration
• Customizable sound alerts with volume adjusting feature
• Full emoticons support
• Context help support
• Copy’ n’ paste support
• Multi-page transport preferences dialog

Awesome chat program for your Nokia Communicator.

Download IM+ Mobile Instant Messenger S60 3rd 7.0.6 in Softonic

I remember when a 'community' was a group of people living in the same neighbourhood who would hang out together, organise street parties, set up sports teams and generally have fun together. Now the definition of a community seems to be reserved for a whole bunch of people who have never met exchanging pointless tittle-tattle over the Internet.

I'm no cynic though, and I feel that online communities can enrich our daily lives if used in moderation. iMobicue is a new take on the community/social networking phenomenon, allowing you to share video, text and photos via your cellphone as well as chatting through MSN and Yahoo! through voice or text messaging.

The best thing about iMobiecue is that it 's free of charge. The set-up procedure is a pretty simple one, aided by a series of wizards that explain precisely what the data you're entering will be used for.

Once installed, there's loads you can do via the software, basically opening up the contents of your mobile to be viewed by anyone. As such, people will be able to browse your photo albums, video collections and messages. Of course, you can define what you want people to see and who you want to see it, making for an interesting way of keeping people who don't live near you up-to-date with what you're up to these days.

Viewing other people's photos and videos can be a slow process, but thanks to the inclusion of MSN and Yahoo! messaging features, you can chat away while you're waiting. At present the Mobicue community is pretty small, but if more people warm to the idea of a mobile Facebook-cum-Twitter-cum-Messenger service, this could become a whole new way of making new friends and staying in touch on the move.

Give it a try and see how you get on, but don't neglect your neighbours!

Download iMobicue 1.0.0 (S60) in Softonic