Windows Phone 7 has been hyped beyond limits by Microsoft, so much that you would think it’s even better than iOS and Android. Sadly, the reality is far from it. Apart from the UI, there’s not much to talk boast about yet. That might change with time as Microsoft fixes the crappy scrolling and zooming performance in Marketplace apps. Anyhow, one of the first killer apps for us has arrived on Windows Phone 7, and it’s called Flory IM.
Flory IM has support for Google Talk along with push notifications and tile notifications. It does what no other Windows Live Messenger app on Windows Phone 7 does. It’s simple, fast, full featured and just works. The only problem? It’s in German. According to WPCentral, the developer has been working on a translation, but we’ll get what we can have for such a great free app, without any ads too.
According to the developer, Facebook IM, and ICQ chat is also possible via Jabber protocol but we haven’t tried that. Google talk works exceptionally well, though. The messages arrive after a slight delay but it’s totally acceptable. Resuming doesn’t work well right now – going home directly from the app and then trying to go back doesn’t bring the app back to its previous state.
In terms of design, the app perfectly fits the Metro design language of Windows Phone 7. The color is pleasing to the eyes. There’s no smiley or chat history support, neither can u flick between open chats. The thumbnails don’t show user images either. As we said, it’s a very simple app. Although one neat touch is the light signal in the app – it turns green when the app is connected and red when it’s not. So you know when the app has done resuming and connecting before you can reply to messages.
Flory supports push and tile notifications. When you are using the phone you get push notifications on the top of the screen, just like text messages. If you pin the app to your home screen, you also get tile notifications that show the number of unread messages. That’s all what we wanted from a good messenger app.
For the price of free or if you’re a Google Talk user, this is a must have app! Get it now from the Marketplace!
Download Flory IM from Marketplace
