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Xumii, demonstrated at DemoFall, is a mobile application that brings the major social networks and IM services to your cell phone. It allows you to change you status, check your friends updates, chat with them and share pictures as well, all from one single application.
With the usage of mobile services on the rise, and the likes of iPhone being gifted so many web applications, non-iPhone users must have felt left out. Xumii works on Blackberry, Nokia ( S60 and S40 ), Sony Ericsson, i-mate, Samsung, LG, Motorola and HTC phones. The services that Xumii supports are AIM, Flickr, Facebook, Google Talk, imeem, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.
While all this sounds great, it’s hard to give an opinion without testing an application first hand. So, I gave Xumii a try myself. The sign up and download process is as simple as it gets. You’ll be sent an sms with a link to download the application after you’re done setting up services. For Facebook you’ll have to go through the permissions setup, while for others it’s more simple.
Instead of a password, Xumii uses a 4-digit PIN which is odd as every service nowadays uses passwords. The simplicity of Xumii ends once you install the application on your mobile. It’s not easy to navigate through at all. The services are all mixed up and there’s no way to separate them. It would have been better to put them under different menu items, but that’s not the case. The menu lists options to view updates, find friends, group chat and view wall. Now, we know only Facebook has the wall feature, so why not put that under a Facebook menu item?
Although, once you get past this, you start appreciating the service, as you can do a lot from the
interface. You can share your Facebook pictures with your contacts right from the application. You can also upload images and videos to Facebook and other services from Xumii. Walls can be viewed (or stalked), written on and gifts can be sent as well. So, a lot of functionality there if you’re an avid Facebook addict. The IM isn’t bad either, but you have to press any letter to start typing, which is very different than other applications which require you to press ‘Write’ to open up the text box.
Xumii also acts as your Address Book, as it’ll fetch all information you can access about your contacts. This is a great feature in my opinion as this makes it one of the most complete address book for mobile phones.
Overall, the application is good enough for a version 1. You can’t deny the fact that this is one of the most functional mobile apps out there. So, giving credit where it’s due, Xumii has attempted to fill a gap that was left open with almost every developer going to the iPhone platform now. Another thing I’d like to see is Twitter integration in Xumii. Twitter has as much as loyal users as Facebook, and Xumii would gather a huge following that way since there isn’t any good enough application for Twitter on cell phones ( excluding Windows Mobile, iPhone and Blackberry ).
Once you get the hang of it, you’ll get to like Xumii. Still, I hope they clean up and streamline the interface even more. Highly recommended for all mobile users!

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