voip

On the night before I receive my N97 from Nokia WOM World for a brief trial, just for fun I looked back at my N999 concept/vision from December 1, 2008. And what the heck here's the N999 concept updated for July 2009 (notable updates are in bold):

1. screen with as many pixels as the 5800 Tube or iPhone (sorry but QVGA doesn't cut it in 2009!)
2. S60 simplified and fixed as Rui describes
3. 5 megapixel camera with cover and Xenon flash with 3x optical zoom and 640x480 30fps video (basically re-use the awesome N82 camera hardware and software and combine with the N93 optical zoom)
4. Quad band GSM and 3G (i.e. works on Rogers and AT&T in North America AND European 3G out of the box just like the N85, no funky North American model)
5. Built in ShoZu (with 10MB limit removed for 3G and WiFi, make the limit 50-200MB for 3G and WiFi) - killer app for photographers and videobloggers - Qik is built  into the N97 why not ShoZu? (I can't stand Share Online's limit of 6 photos at a time since I take over 50 a day; hope it's removed on the N97)
6. Bult-in Qik (killer app for videobloggers!) - Qik is built  into the N97 can't wait to try it!
   
7. Awesome web browser (Nokia's Web Kit browser was great in 2006, it is now far behind Apple's)
8. Lots of available RAM (as much as the N95 8GB please!), 8GB storage on built-in card - Reviews are mixed on the N97, sounds like it has a lot of RAM (more than the N95 8GB)  but with widgets it takes up a lot more. - I doubt I will use widgets!
9. Built in Nokia viNes to take advantage of Nokia's great GPS hardware (killer GPS app!) - viNes apears to be dead. Nokia Sports Tracker appears to be alive, so I'd rather have that built-in
   
10. Built in Twitter App i.e. built in Gravity

Now I know the above list is not possible given today's processors and batteries but in that case I can live without optical zoom! Everything else is doable as far as I can tell.

I still don't need:

1. QWERTY keyboard - I'd rather have an awesome camera and flash than a touch or QWERTY keyboard. And for me touch keyboards are just as good as QWERTY.
2. Email (Email is dead to me (ok email isn't dead but my resolution is to take any email thread  that I need to keep that has more than 2 replies to a wiki or blog); I continue to use it  for work and to communicate with "normal" folks!) - If the browser is as good as the iPhone's, then webmail clients work just fine.
3. Touch (would be nice, but not convinced Nokia has the software chops for this; I am not interested in S60 transmogrified with touch, I would prefer touch to be part of a totally revamped user interface that's NOT S60.) - Unfortunately it appears that Nokia's current touch interface s*cks. I hope I am proven wrong by my N97 trial.
4. Micro SD card slot
5. Calendar (would be nice but that's what my laptop is for :-) !) - Again with a good enough browser a web client would be good enough)
6. IM (Twitter is IM enough for me and I am fine with using it in the browser)
7. VOIP is dead to me except for Skype
8. MMS - I am not convinced I need it, I can always use ShoZu email photos :-) but I was wrong about SMS (so maybe I am wrong about MMS) - I am pretty sure I am wrong about MMS and I am pretty sure (unfortunately) I will be MMSing my relatives with pictures since they all finally seem to have MMS plans and devices and none of my luddite :-) relatives still use flickr or any of the other public or private photosharing sites!
   

[UPDATE: Mac Skype has a keypad icon which you click on to send DTMF tones which  means i can easily use the Iotum app without paying, cool! hopefully this works on N800 Skype too] 

I tried a conference call to myself on the weekend and it worked fine! I couldn't get it to work with Mac Skype (couldn't figure out how send my phone number, how does one send a DTMF tones in Mac Skype?) but that's Skype's fault and I am sure will be easily remedied. This will be great for impromptu calls.

Question: is this a Lypp competitor? Answer: I think it could be but is not directly!

From "Finally, a useful application on Facebook" — Alec Saunders .LOG:

QUOTE

For North American users, the calls are free. You call our bridge in the 218 area code, and pay only the charges you would normally pay, whether that's airtime on your cellular phone, or long distance on your land line. As Jim Courtney at the Skype Journal discovered yesterday, you can even make the calls from Skype — great if you have an unlimited Skype account.

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I haven't done the exhaustive testing that Alec has but am very impressed with my 1st TalkPlus call tonight to my sister's 416 area code cellphone using the TalkPlus beta. More later.

FROM TalkPlus: first look. -- Alec Saunders .LOG:

QUOTE

1. Allows you to attach more than one phone line to your mobile phone. There's no need to have multiple SIMs or accounts. Rather, TalkPlus lets you simply add phone lines — like your office line, your personal mobile phone, and your home phone — to your handset. You can also add virtual lines, which simply terminate on the cellular handset. From that point forward, any calls you make can be made presenting the caller ID that you choose.
2. Allows you to save money on your phone bill by making every cellular call into a local call. That means I can call friends on the west coast, or in Europe, but only pay for local Ottawa minutes (plus a few pennies per minute to TalkPlus). With the confusing array of cellular options available, this means a radical simplification for many of us.
3. Host conference calls from the handset. Simply select the people you wish to have join the call, and it will call them and bring them into the call, using the same low TalkPlus rates.

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Stuart nails it. I can't continue to use the current version of fring (0.74). The constant beeping every time you receive a Skype message and the fact that group chats are broken up and delivered individually by the person chatting outweigh the fact that fring does a great job of allowing me to call my Skype contacts for free and do Skype Out at no extra charge.

However, this can be fixed easily I think. So I am eagerly awaiting a new version of fring that fixes these bugs.

FROM N80, Truphone, Fring + Notes (Unbound Spiral):

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On the... needs a solution side. I'm a member of some multi-chats. Fring breaks these up and delivers by person when they come in. I've logged on or rebooted my phone and the "Fringing" thing doesn't stop "Fringing" as these messages catch up. Thus there are some of the usual synch issues with using Skype with more than one client. I have no idea what happens to history. Be nice to know.

The chat still has a little bug. Each time you get an update from a buddy it kicks you out of where you were chatting. With more than one chat on the go this is even worse. So I found myself having to watch the keys and restart sentences. It will get fixed.

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Installed fring on the N80i last night and it works pretty well. Aside from one crash on initial install and the usual annoying Series 60 memory issues (Nokia please put more memory in your phones), it seems to work as advertised. I have tested Skype Chat and N80i to Skype calls via fring and they work. One noteworthy bug, fring doesn't work with Skype group chats (it seems to partially support but not fully support: you can see a group chat but you can't participate in the group chat)

From VoIP Watch: Fring Is Here:

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Fring is a peer to peer communications program that lets mobile users talk for free between one another over WiFi, 3G or GPRS. What's really interesting is the folks at FRING have engineered a way to talk to Skype users as well as Google Talk users from within the the Fring client. This is interesting because Skype seems to have abandoned efforts for the time being to be in the mobile market. For months we've been hearing tha there was going to be a Symbian Skype client but at CES I heard this was far from close to happening, something that has Symbian fans scratching their heads.

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Truphone-ing to South Africa was a success on the N80i but the quality wasn't as good as my call to Holland. There was no echo but there was a noticeable lag between the time I spoke and the time it was understood at the other end and vice versa.

After the call the N80i "crashed". In quotation marks because the phone still worked but it wouldn't re-acquire my cellphone provider, Fido. Instead of displaying my provider, it displayed nothing (as if the SIM had been deactivated or I was in offline mode).

A bug in the SIP stack on the N80i, a bug in TruPhone, a bug somewhere else in my S60 V3 firmware manifesting itself (I am running V 4.0632.0.38 13-10-2006 RM-92 Nokia N80 (01)) ?

I fixed it by rebooting the phone!

Just spoke with my sister in Holland on the N80i using TruPhone. Crystal Clear quality. Our 10 minute and 33 second call cost $USD 0.37 I can see how this can get addictive. Great quality (better than Skype - sounded like a local call), easy to make calls and with a familiar phone interface unlike Skype!

Hmmm who needs a limited device like the Sony Mylo when you have easy to use VoIP with the N80i and Truphone. Don't forget too that the N80i has the flexibility and openness of Series 60 along with many 3rd party apps unlike the closed Mylo!

Need to try lots more calls e.g. to South Africa and China but Truphone feels like a killer app for WiFi phones!

Truphone was easy to setup (Alec Saunders has a nice post about it) if you are familiar with WiFi on series 60 phones (getting much closer to something normal people can use!) and I verified it works with my land line. Nokia put the VoIP software in all of your WiFi phones not just the N80i!

I encountered a minor bug when trying to add $5 USD to my account with PayPal (PayPal worked but the redirect back to Truphone's site failed! Cheese Louise, it's 2006 why is ecommerce so hard!) but other than that it looks like a solid product.

Now the real test: cheap calls to Holland, and maybe even China and South Africa.

If you want to check it out call +13604880717 or better yet get an E61 or N80i and call me for free via Truphone!

My free trial N80i with built in Sip VoIP client that supports Gizmo was delivered today but nobody was home so I have to pick it up tomorrow. I can't wait to try Gizmo over WiFi! Very cheap phone calls to my relatives in Holland wherever there is WiFi. Yes! And 3 mega pixel camera and quad band so I'll have ShoZu over EDGE again! Yes!

The Mylo looks sweet, but I doubt I will ever get one because it's Sony (which means it's proprietary in the wrong ways; I don't like Memory Sticks for example or the proprietary movie media format on the PSP) and I want the openness and hackability of Linux and I want Jabber. All of which the Nokia 770 does better it would appear.

FROM Sony Mylo - In Stores Now...:

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My first impression -- this may be for Sony in this decade what the Walkman was for them in the 1980's. Web access, photos, videos, WiFi connectivity, media player -- they were all there in a device smaller than the original Walkman.

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Happy belated Canada Day and happy July 4th to my American cousins.

I am still here. Just took a wee bit of a blogging rest.

Had a nice conversation with Andy Abramson at BloggerCon IV. He told me nicely that my 850 Mhz post was bogus :-) (and pointed me to a nice explanatory mopocket post about the cingular walled garden: "Basically this means that if Cingular does not recognize your phones International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number then you can't use things like MobiTV, Rabble and a host of other applications that companies that are on deck with Cingular have sent me to try but would not install. Your phone must be a Cingular branded phone which means the phones IMEI number will be registered with Cingular. ")!

My summary: it's more the fact that the carriers know exactly what phone you are running (and the N91 is unsupported and unknown to North American carriers as was the N70 and 7610 for the most part) and know you are roaming so they can turn off your GPRS data based on that aaargh!

There is hope. The WiFi stack on the N91 is verrrrrrryyyyyyy 1.0. It crashes and is less than a 100% reliable. However it works well when it works. If every phone had WiFi and every place had WiFi (as do most of the places I hang out in like home, the Bryght offices, and Take 5) and if Skype or a SIP client works reliably over WiFi, then it won't matter that the carriers will only let me do voice calls (and not data with "unsupported" handsets like the N91). Lots of "ifs" but it's coming. Mark my words. 5 years from now making voice calls over WiFi will be painless and something everybody does not just some early adopters!

Downloading EQO for Mac OS X now to my Mac and to my N70. About time! More later! Still don't understand why a desktop client is needed; hope that this requirement goes away in time. Looking forward to using Skype on my N70 via EQO.

$US 50 list, looks like it might be the one to get because it's cheaper and from a brand with a known reputation (unlike ActionTec and the $US 30 Chatterbox) and it works with Macs. Anybody tried this?

From USRobotics USB Internet Speakerphone via Skype Journal.:

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The USRobotics USB Internet Speakerphone works with the powerful Skype-- Voice-over-Internet application to enable "hands-free" and toll-free calls around the world. Simply install Skype software and plug the Internet Speakerphone into a USB 1.1 or 2.0 port to make free phone calls to any Skype user world-wide. Powerful echo cancellation technology assures high quality calls. Convenient volume and mute buttons allow you to manage your conversation without accessing the computer application.

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This is cool. Wish I had to time to play with this!

From Easy PABX - voip-info.org (via Alec Saunders).:

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With Easy PABX you can create your own virtual PABX online in just minutes. Easy PABX is based on Asterisk and best of all - it's completely free.

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