I use irssi, as well. The point of my app was probably lost in my wall of text, though. On the iPhone, an SSH client into screen and then irssi is pretty nasty. Now, on an iPad I might be able to put up with a nice, expensive SSH client, like the one from panic. Even then, that's a lot that you have to do just to check IRC. Also, the required overhead of a constant network connection at the mercy of the phone's wifi. I'm not wrapping a protocol or extending IRC in any way. I'm funneling IRC data into a database so that I can use it in a more natural way from a native iOS app. That's what's ideal for IRC, on a phone, in my opinion. Your mileage may very, though, and to each their own. Everybody likes their IRC their own way and I'm not even sure I'm 100% sold on this way yet, but I'm going to try it out. :)
right. I'm on android so not too familiar with the iphone's clients. It's just the simplest works-everywhere (mobile, desktop, laptop, etc.) scenario for me, and I'm in the same place, same windows, buffers.
also, fwiw, irssi itself can be a persistent proxy, so you could just implement a native client.