We were talking about iPhone's lack of messaging capability being unlocked by Cerulean Studio's Trillian Astra earlier today, however based on information revealed by folks at Engadget, Apple might be launching its own messaging application iChat fairly soon.
More details on iChat application for iPhone after the jump.
Before I begin a quick background on iChat, iChat is a versatile instant text messaging application, supporting AIM and Jabber Instant Messenger clients currently available for MACs.
So getting back, above image is from a survey sent by AT&T to iPhone users to get feedback on their experience using the phone in different contexts. In the Edge performance subsection there is an option for users to give their feedback using the iChat application in addition to the other features.
It is still a speculation whether AT&T goofed up in putting the iChat part in the survery or if Apple is indeed working on iChat application for the iPhone. In my opinion iChat was one of the applications which was expected to be one of the features available in the iPhone at the time of the launch but had to be turned off due to some bugs to avoid delays in the iPhone launch and someone forgot to inform AT&T who was going to run the survey a week after launch to remove the iChat part from the survey.
I would take this line as it was quite strange for Apple to launch the iPhone without instant messaging functionality when the feature has been a common feature available in most smartphones since quite sometime.
So irrespective of iChat being rolled out by Apple via a firmware update or Cerulean Studio launching Trillian Astra post beta, iPhone users should expect the instant messaging functionality in their iPhone's fairly soon.
[image courtesy Engadget]
I suspect they're (for some reason) referring to the SMS app as "iChat", especially considering that there is no other mention of SMS in the list.
How do I get one of these surveys? Because I have a lot to say about their EDGE data network performance…