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Among the notable gaps in the original iPhone functionality, one of the greatest concern prominent was instant messaging. iPhone users have long had to make do with web clients, SMS messages, or jailbreak apps. But at last in that place’s some official native IM client from the iPhone—provided you use AOL’s Instant Messaging network.

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AOL’s AIM client (iTunes link) is pleasantly straightforward: when you login, you’ll be asked to login into an existing profit on AIM, .Mac, or MobileMe. Four toolbar icons across the bottom let you aggrandizement your buddy list, favorite contacts, personal info, and current IMs.

At the top of the buddy list hierarchy is groups: you can see a list of your groups pulled from AOL’s servers, and how many contacts in each arrange are online (in that place are furthermore a pair of handy “online” and “offline” groups that do much what you’d imagine). Tapping a group shows you all the currently logged in contacts, including their state (idle, away, available), station message if any, and buddy icon. If you tap the Edit button in the top left of a group you can add or destroy users from that group—unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you can assign a pre-existing contact to a new group; rather it lets you add an entirely new contact.

You’ll also notice a blue arrow next to their screenname that power of determination give you that user’s profile, which includes their buddy icon, status message, group, and nickname. You can bring out the group or nickname if you wish, though more or less disappointingly, there doesn’t seem to be an automatic tie-in by the iPhone’s contacts database. Two buttons obstruction you send the user an IM or add them to your favorites list.

The favorites list is just a list of your favorite contacts; it displays likely any of the groups, but shows you both online and offline contacts. You be possible to remove contacts from favorites if you like by tapping the Edit button or by swiping across the contact’s screenname.

The My Info pane shows you your picture (which you can tap to change) and lets you change your status to Available, Away, or Invisible, and set a rank message by tapping Message.

Finally, the IM section: the meat and potatoes of any one instant messaging retainer. The app displays a listel of all of your in every one’s mouth IM conversations, including the number of unread messages you have for one and the other of them. Tapping a converse will take you into a standard IM conversation where you can read your correspondent’s messages or despatch them a reply. The layout’s pretty snazzy: it’ll show you your contact buddy picture, and their message in a nice, clear driver’s seat, along with a time stamp.

Even more conveniently, grant that you’re carrying on multiple IM conversations at once, in that place’s no need to go upper part to the conversation list every time you engender a message from someone otherwise. Just above the text input field, you’ll see small dots representing your different conversations (just like those in Safari that display multiple pages). To switch to another chat candid flick the conversation part of the screen.

One object that’s a little tricky about AIM is if you want to appliance multiple screen names. Once you’ve logged in for the first time, AIM won’t prompt you for your username and password again—it’ll just log in with the same certificates you gave it at the beginning. If you want to change accounts, you’ll have to begone back to the iPhone’s Home screen, tap the Settings application, then scroll down to the of the present day AIM section at the bottom. In there, you can make some change in. the account information, as suitably as whether or not AIM logs you out every time you leave.

Instant messaging on the iPhone may not be quite considered in the state of robust as it is on the desktop, goal it’s an addition that we’ve long been waiting for.