One big problem with this approach is a lack of push notifications/persistent connections on the iOS side. On the Android side you can have something like Gibbe

One big problem with this approach is a lack of push notifications/persistent connections on the iOS side. On the Android side you can have something like Gibberbot running all the time and providing you notifications of new messages, but since iOS still lacks true multitasking, if you don't have your XMPP client open and in the foreground, you go offline and can't receive messages/notifications anymore.