If you haven't heard, Google Wave is the bold new chat client that's going to change the face of communication forever. Wave will let you chat with your friends in real time, with each word being displayed as it is typed. It's also going to have a real-time translation feature, and document editing feature.

Wave will be coming out for the iPhone, as well as all Android running smartphones. You can sign up for an early invite here. There's been a lot of hope that we'll get to see a workable beta version of Wave sometime in the Fall, but that sounds somewhat unlikely now.

Taylor Wimberly, of Android and Me, got to test out Google Wave for Android at the Google I/O conference. In its current state, Wimberly calls the Android build of Wave, “almost unusable.” He cited extremely long loading times, browser freezing, and “overall slowness.” Most of the problems appear to be related to the many processes of Google Wave taking up too much phone memory.

This shouldn't be seen as a mark against Google or Google Wave. It's an extremely new program that is still in the throes of development. I fully expect it to be up to par by the time Google releases it. Wimberly said not to expect Wave before 2010, which is disappointing but probably pretty accurate.