2008-12-04 VoIP calls on your iPhone

What should I use?

GTalk

Skype

fring

TruePhone

Nimbuzz

At the moment I’m torntrying fring based on a recommendation I got. And I’m starting to feel *the lack of Free Software*.

​#iPhone ​#Gadgets ​#Software

Comments

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I also installed *Nimbuzz* and noticed far more connection problems. I understand network problems. In terms of user interface, I don’t like there to be message boxes that I have to click away for all the errors. Just flag the connections that don’t work. I also noticed a little usability bug when providing my Skype contact info. This I could not do at my desktop and I hate to do on the iPhone because I dislike the keyboard. When I try to save the info, I get an error telling me that the server is down. Again, this can happen. But I can’t save what I typed until the server is back up, apparently. Grrr. I think I’ll be sticking to *fring* for the moment.

– Alex Schroeder 2008-12-05 15:43 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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Then again, I noticed that fring will connect me to AIM, show Claudia as disconnected, show her that I am connected (!), allowing her to send me messages which get lost (!!). Upon a whim I tried to send her a message even though she was disconnected and that worked. This is weird.

Claudia

– Alex Schroeder 2008-12-06 14:07 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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I am currently using fring on my Nokia E71.

It has some glitches, e.g., it’s impossible to type special characters such as ! $ % # because the keyboard mapping for the E71 seems to be buggy from time to time.

Besides that, it works better than any other IM client I’ve tried on a mobile phone before. It even allows me to call my Skype contacts as long as I am on an EDGE/3G connection (GRPS would be too laggy for VoIP).

Of course, fring wants to make money. So they recently started showing ads inside the client/conversation. Hm. I’m missing a Pidgin port for Symbian...

– Jean Pierre 2008-12-07 11:26 UTC

Jean Pierre