Based on my questioning a very small sample of 2 ardent iPhone users (my cousin and my father), the new early-release fring VoIP client is looking like a major winner. I had a play with it yesterday, and the interface looks impressive, and the voice quality & ease of use on SIP seemed pretty good, although my dad was having glitches getting his SkypeOut working on it.
The downside is that at the moment it's only working on jail-broken iPhones, but given the apparent fervour among Apple-istas for it, I'd hope that Cupertino sees sense and makes sure it gets certified as an official app through its developer programme ASAP.
Apart from a very early Truphone demo last year, this appears to be the first major VoIP release for the iPhone. Will be interesting to see what the other players - Truphone, Skype, the enterprise players like Cisco & Divitas etc - do in response.
Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: Thought-leading wireless industry analysis
4 comments:
The problem with none jail-broken iPhone apps is going to be that they can't run in the background, thus effectively rendering a good part of any messenger and telephone software useless. One can only speculate why Apple implemented things this way, but I would be surprised if AT&T didn't have a word in this decision...
My hunch is that Apple is preventing background apps to protect the "user experience." Too many background apps will render the iPhone slow and annoying (just like Windows Mobile). Maybe they will come up with a way to allow a limited number of applications to run in background so users can have some fun without all of the waiting and lockups that occur when Windows Mobile users load everything all at once.
More importantly, running background applications can completely disrupt to very clever and effective power management on the iPhone with the result that battery life is dramatically reduced.
Remember - the iPhone only has a relatively small volume (1400 mAH?) Lithium Ion Polymer battery internally which cannot be easily swapped for another fully charged one when exhausted.
Nice app but needs work. Placing a call via Skypeout has yet to work for me since install. Also, having to re-subscribe to Skype to get contacts to show is annoying. Looking forward to updates...
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