Sunnyvale, California — Standing shoulder to shoulder with its arch rival, Yahoo Messenger has finally made it way to iPhone application on the iTunes App store today, which functions more than just allow you to chat with your buddies. With this latest offering, users of the Yahoo Messenger application will be able to IM no matter where they are.
The application’s feature offers the next best thing to online IM, and it is all bundled inside a slick and easy to use interface.
The latest Yahoo! Messenger is free to download, and instantly enables you to plug into your Yahoo network for instant messaging on the go. It also allows you to chat with friends, see their status, share photos, share links, choose emoticons, and even view recent conversations.
It also lets you send free text messages by choosing a contact’s mobile phone number if they are not online. Replies come back to the app, which could save you a dime each time.
A few smart things you can perform include the ability to sign in or update your status as invisible – we all have one reason or another to use that feature — or remain logged in an idle state when you are playing with other apps or talking on the phone.
Supported features include: IM and SMS sending and receiving, simultaneous IM sessions, emoticons and photos, and web URLs. And when you leave the app to answer a call or do something else on your iPhone, your status is changed to idle. You can also sign out of the app entirely. There is also support for receiving notifications even while the app is offline, due to the multi-tasking restrictions inherent in the iPhone OS.
The software is compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch, but requires the iPhone 2.0 Software Update.
It was amazing as to how long it took for Yahoo Messenger to get its own iPhone app. Although Yahoo waited to make sure the timing was right or had to work out some bugs. This is great news for Yahoo Messenger users who have been dying to put IM in the palm of their hand.
Yahoo Messenger’s pocket-friendly app is one of the neatest mobile IM apps out there and it’s also available for Blackberry and Sidekick via the Yahoo! Mobile product site.
You can check out the video below to see how Yahoo Messenger looks on the iPhone, or get more details on the Yahoo Messenger blog.