I've found renewed love for my G1. Ever since upgrading to Cupcake, I have had one major issue. The IM app will just not keep the connection live for me.
And the worse part is that when IM accounts (all of them: Yahoo, MSN, AOL) are disconnected, the icons still shows that I'm connected and the only way I know whether I am or not is by touching the account.
Still, that is only one issue I've got with the IM app. Even when I find that I'm fortunate enough to be connected, there are times when my contacts do no show up. Or when they do show up on the screen, they would play hide-and-seek with me. Sometimes, they just hide permanently and I'd have to log out and log back in to get my online contacts back.
Still I wasn't about to give up. I did some research and found that many folks have this issue and no one expect a fix to be forth coming. So, what are Android fans to do?
Get Meebo from the Marketplace. Okay, seriously. Some of you might have tried earlier versions and just like the IM app, you get disconnections after not playing with the app for a while. Just like Android's native IM app. For whatever reason, only gTAlk stays connected. And this has lead me to believe that Google is play favorites and T-Mobile is going along with it. Fine.
So back to Meebo. I actually tried two apps. Meebo and eBuddy. I was not ready to put down a few hard-earned dollars on apps only to find that they have the same issues with the IM app. Reading the reviews for some of the apps, free and paid, I decided I was not going to pay for these IM apps.
So, I was forced to try only the free ones. Great, I thought. I looked at Meebo and eBuddy. Both promised to stay connected but even then some reviewers still had connectivity issues and eBuddy suffered stability issues. Still both apps are free. Why not give Meebo another chance and eBuddy as well.
After installing both apps, I set up IM accounts on both. I was connected with Meebo with no prob. The same with eBuddy. In fact after a duration, both apps had my IM accounts connected. I tested them with messages to my contacts. "Testing". "Testing". "Testing". I knew folks received my messages because I got back a couple of "@#$#%!!!".
Then I added more accounts to both apps and things continue to be great. It's was just what I wanted. To be able to stay connected as long as I want to my IM buddies. Must be some childhood issue I don't know about.
Then something happened. Meebo continued to work great. But eBuddy developed issues. I had problems with duplicate contacts. Some appeared online while others were supposedly offline and I couldn't understand why. It was not an issue that reviewers mentioned so I left it at then. Then out of the blue, Android told me that I had to forced it to quit. Now, that was an issue that other G1 folks have problems with.
It happened twice and I decided since Meebo is doing what I want already, there was no need for eBuddy at this time. I went to watch "Hangover" (instant classic, by the way) and received a few IMs during the movie (I had the ringer off in case you're wondering).
At the conclusion of this post here, the Meebo has kept my IM live for almost twelve hours. I don't know what Meebo did that Google can't or isn't willing to do but if Meebo wants to charge me for future updates, I would be willing to pay (nah, free works just fine for me).
Anyway, Meebo a definite download if you're having IM issues with the IM app from Google. And I'll be keep an eye out for eBuddy to see if the stability issue has been resolved. But since both are free, give them both a try!
Note: Connection is over 3G. I'm pretty sure EDGE will cut off your IM connection during a call.
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