Any thoughts about creating a companion app where you can see which buddies are online, get updates on new missions and news and use the in game chat?

You can just log in and sit docked at a station and do all of this. If you change the UI setting to show the station in the background, the game doesn't even use much battery power like this.

I accidentally left VO on my android phone docked all day once and it wasn't too bad.

Yeah was thinking something a bit more lightweight to go on my phone. Besides the iPad version quits when the iPad goes to sleep at the moment ;)

There's some plugins players have made that might do that too. Check out "vocontrol" by firsm.

You'd still have to leave the game client running in order to use it though.

You can see which buddies are online by viewing the Active Players page. You can chat with others in-game using the community IRC relay.