Instant Messengers are very popular on computers, now with the advancement of cellular technology it has become possible to connect to MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ and other instant messenger services through mobile phones. The internet and Java enabled mobile devices make Mobile Instant Messaging a reality. The only major problems are the small screen and the input of messages as only a few can type in messages very fast. However there are phones with large screens and QWERTY keypads. Here are the few of the free services available today to do this. However keep in mind that you will still be charged by your service provider for the internet usage on your mobile. Agile Messenger the most widely used software for this purpose, however it required Symbian OS and is not a freeware anymore.

WIRELESS VILLAGE:

Most of the new mobile phones come with a built in chat client based on the wireless village technology(technically called OMA IMPS), it is known as My Friends on SonyEricsson phones, My Presence on Nokia and IM on Motorola phones . It is currently the best option for most phones, but its major drawback is the polling system it is based on. The phone has to connect to the server every few minutes and get the new status of online contacts or get new messages. Therefore the messages are not Instant, there is some delay between the messages. You can set up a smaller interval for polling but it is still not efficient enough and results in more usage cost.

Although this technology has been around for sometime not many people seem to know about it. Mostly because the phone manufacturers or the cellular service providers do not provide any service which could be used with the client built in on the phones. However there are free services available at www.yamigo.com and www.smartvas.com. The one very big advantage of using this over the other methods is that phones have an option to use this in the background. This means you can run Wireless Village in background and use any other application. The very big disadvantage is that you have to add every person whose online status you wish to be notified of in your Yamigo or SmartVAS contact list as well. This has now become easier for there now is an option which can be used to fetch the contacts automatically.

JABBER:

Jabber technology has been around for sometime, this lets users to connect to multiple instant messenger networks simultaneously. This consists of a server and client. The server stores the usernames and passwords for all networks. You have to login to the server using a jabber client. There are now several Jabber clients available for mobile phones. A very good service especially for mobile phones is available at www.jabber.nu. They have got several builds of their client for different mobiles. However the older phones which have MIDP1.0 would not be able to use most of the jabber clients as they do not have TCP socket support.

E-MESSENGER:

This is the most popular method as all it requires is a phone that support mobile internet. No Java support or anything else is required. All this needs is a WAP browser. The service is available on www.e-messenger.com. However in the mobile you have to enter: mob.e-messenger.net. I have successfully used this on many phones. There are major drawbacks as the login screen would not remember your sign in name. If you have to use something else on your mobile you would have to close the WAP browser. This site is only for MSN, there might be other such sites for other networks.

FUTURE:

It would not take long before a client and server is created so that anyone can run the server on a 24/7 static IP internet connection to which the client would connect. So that users can avoid giving their login information to third parties. Such a client/server application would be made so that the data transfer between the mobile and the server is reduced and mobile internet charges are lower.

LAST WORDS:

The methods I have discussed here are free of charge, you can easily find other commercial solutions but I dont think it is worth paying for chatting on mobiles, as you dont get the same experience you get on a computer.