iOS and Android Still Lack Global IM-presence Setting

One of the most annoying things about using iOS or Android for me is that I never really know which IM networks I’m signed into because there’s no global place to set my availability. Today we’ve got Skype, AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Chat, and plenty more. It’s not that we want to be spread across so many instant messaging protocols, but the reality is that we want to talk to our friends and they’re not always on the same network.

Between my time with Nokia’s beautiful N810 and the N900, I got to spend more time than most with the open-source Maemo OS (which eventually merged into Meego {which as now merged into something else…}). While I hated the fact that Maemo 4 (found on the N810) couldn’t decide whether or not it was to be used with a finger or with a stylus, both Maemo 4 and 5 had an excellent feature which iOS nor Android offer — the ability to easily change your IM network presence.

Half the time, an iOS or Android phone is telling my friends that I’m “online” on one of my various IM networks even when I don’t want to be. I’ll pull my phone out, after having not checked it for an hour or so, to find a few IMs that my friends sent 30 or 40 minutes ago because my phone made them think I was available to have a conversation; I didn’t respond and it ends up looking like I was just ignoring them.

In Maemo 4 and 5, setting instant messaging availability was dead simple. From one place on the home screen, you could set your IM availability for every account that you were signed into. A little icon changed colors to let you know exactly what your friends saw as your availability across various IM networks: online (green), away (yellow), or offline (red). This is something that I dearly miss in iOS and Android, where my mobile IM use has declined greatly over the years as a result of not being able to globally set my presence, and having it be completely unclear whether or not my phone is telling people that I’m available for an IM conversation.

Facebook seems to be the worst perpetrator with their half-baked IM/Messaging system which tries to be both IM and Email at the same time. I constantly receive messages in my Facebook inbox that were sent as IMs when my friends saw me as “online”.

I have the same issue on the other end as well. I’ll see friends as “online” through some IM network and start up a conversation, only to receive an apology text later that they were on their phone and didn’t get the message.

Though Maemo didn’t come anywhere close to the success of iOS or Android, it still has some good lessons to teach the big guys.