I switch mobile phones quite often and whenever I get a new Symbian phone, I have a specific routine of 30 minutes, including removing the useless stuff away from the Main Menu, changing some settings and installing Whatsapp, Gravity and Nimbuzz. You can be certain that if any of these 3 applications aren’t there, I won’t be using the phone at all.
Nimbuzz has easily become the default Instant Messaging applications for Symbian, thanks to its one-login that imports all IM accounts instead of having to setup each one separately. Lately, it also added compression which made the app snappier for all tasks and decreased its data usage. But for the past few versions, Nimbuzz has been trying to get some revenue out of its free service by displaying ads in its chat window, which are non-intrusive but may annoy some people nonetheless. Enter the premium Ad-Free version of Nimbuzz, now available in the Ovi Store for about 2.29$. This new Ad-Free version of Nimbuzz currently offers 3 advantages over the free version.
First, as the name implies, there are no more ads displayed in chat windows, which when you have a device with a small screen or when you use your big touchscreen phone in landscape, makes a lot of difference in terms of screen estate.
Second, there are now many customization options available, to make the experience more personal. You can now pick between 4 styles, including the existing Normal and Simple and 2 new ones: an iPhone-like Speech Bubbles design and a more streamlined Text design that will help you save even more on screen estate.
Another advantage is the ability to set your own background, either a solid color or a picture from your gallery, and your own font color for chat messages. This is a great feature, as I have often run into Symbian Themes that were amazing aside from the fact that Nimbuzz chats were barely visible while using them. Thanks to this new feature, I can now set my own background and font color and have a great theme and a readable chat window 🙂
Third, you can be sure to get new Nimbuzz features, like the ones above, with the paid version much faster than the free version. I believe as new features are added, they will start to trickle down to the free version, but it will be long after they are available for the paid users.
If you’re a fan of Nimbuzz and have enjoyed their free service for a couple of years now, I think 3$ is a very small price to pay for a better experience and for supporting one of the best applications on Symbian, so head over to the Ovi Store and download it.