For years fans of Windows Live Messenger had to resort to 3rd party iPhone applications to chat with friends, sometimes at a reasonable cost. Applications like Beejive IM, IM+ and Meebo allow you to chat with friends on Windows Live, as well as variety of other services, but if your after a solid, official Windows Live Messenger app, it has finally arrived.
From the screens above you can see the Windows Live Messenger iPhone app reflects the new Wave 4 UI available on http://home.live.com and will soon come to Windows Live Essentials desktop applications.
Functionality wise, the iPhone app allows you to see your social updates from your friends, from various different social networks all in a single stream. In-line commenting is supported. You can also upload photos directly from your iPhone to Windows Live, as well as accessing your hotmail email without exiting the app. The app also supports push notifications, so you can leave the app and still receive notifications when chat replies arrive.
Another important feature is the ability to sign into the iPhone app while still signed into your desktop messenger client. This is handy if your back and fwd to your desk a lot and handy inclusion.
The Photos section gives you access to your photos uploaded to http://photos.live.com and actually supports pinch and zoom gestures to resize the thumbnails, as well as a slideshow option.
Unfortunately Australian’s can’t currently download the app, hopefully this is fixed quickly, as Microsoft has spent a great deal of effort promoting just how many Australian’s use their services.
More @ iTunes Preview via My Microsoft Life
