As you may have head, Xync, the Lync client for iOS from is now available on the apple app store.

The iPhone and iPad apps are separate, $19.99 each. They could make the names a little clearer, I think a lot of people will miss this.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I work for Modality systems, and we also have an iPhone/iPad OCS/Lync app, iDialog, that works via the OCS CWA server for instant messaging and presence.

I had a quick play with the iPad app tonight on my iPad2. Note I haven’t tested on the iphone, please share if you have

It signed in over the edge, no additional server or setup on the Lync side, just sip uri, domain and password required.

Below are a few screenshots (click to enlarge)

Sign in screen

Once you’ve signed in you have all your contact groups

You can set your presence

The cog gives you preferences

Hitting the keypad on bottom right allows you to make a regular phone call

Clicking a user gives you the following options

Instant Message

Voice calls and Video calls

The video looks ok on the iPad, but it was blocky and slow to update on the Lync end. (both clients signed in over edge, together on good local Wifi)

Full screen (note the blue is just the ipad covering the laptop camera)

You can do other tasks while in a call and come back to the call (not sure why it says recording)

And the client will run in the background. It appears to run for the same 9 minutes or so that the modality client does, this seems to be a restriction around IOS’s capabilities

Incoming call:

Incoming IM

And it can handle multiple sessions

Overall it’s looking pretty good for a first release. I had no crashes when using it on the ipad2, I did have one instance where it was signed in on the ipad, but didn’t actually appear signed in from other Lync clients (no presence, IM failed), but a sign in and out fixed that.

Video isn’t exactly VGA or HD, but it works, looks far better on the iPad end than the Lync end.

It’s great to see an app signing in directly over the edge server with no extra setup on the Lync side.

I was testing with myself so didn’t really get a chance to test call quality/lag, I’ll post as I play a little more.

It would be good if there was a free limited trial for testing.

If anyone else has any feedback please share.