Yahoo! Messenger is an iPhone chat application that allows you to send instant messages, make voice and video calls, and exchange SMS messages for free.
Thankfully, the user interface in Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone is a lot less cluttered than the desktop version. Once you're signed in, your contacts are displayed in a Friends list, and their online status is indicated with a colored button.
To start chatting, you just click on a contact and tap the IM chat window to open up the on-screen keyboard. From here you can also add emoticons, URLs and photos to the messages by touching the appropriate tab. The photo option lets you add images stored on your iPhone, or capture and send one at that moment.
Yahoo! Messenger keeps a record of all your conversations, which you can view via the 'Messages' tab. These can be deleted at your leisure, if you don't want anyone to see them.
Clicking the webcam button in Yahoo! Messenger will initiate a video call with a contact. Their video stream appears in the large window, and a preview of your outgoing video shows up in a small window at the bottom of the screen. Note that two-way video calling only works between iPhone/iPod touch 4 devices, or an iPhone/iPod 4 and a PC. Currently, the Mac version of Yahoo! Messenger isn't supported for video calls.
You can make free voice calls to other Yahoo! Messenger users, or use the VOIP service to call any number at a significantly reduced rate. A phone icon lets you send free SMS text messages to any of your Yahoo! contacts.
This Yahoo! Messenger build seems quite unstable. The application crashed on a couple of occasions during calls in our tests, and other times it ran very slowly.
Although it offers a very simple, user-friendly interface for chatting, Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone needs more development if it is to compete with the likes of Skype and fring.
