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With New SDK, VoIP Over 3G Apps Now Working On iPhone
silverpig writes "Yesterday marked the announcement of the Apple iPad device, and with it came a new version of the SDK. In this new version, Apple has lifted the VoIP over 3G restrictions that limited VoIP traffic to wifi only. This morning, Fring announced that its iPhone app is 3G-capable starting immediately. No update is needed as apparently the app had 3G capability all along, but a server-side block prevented its use. Furthermore, apparently a 3G-capable version of Skype has been ready for some time now, and has been waiting for this restriction to be lifted."
It's nice to have this enabled finally. However, the mention that this is something blocked on the server side makes me wonder if this may only be relevant to specific markets.
One of the best parts about my iPhone being jailbroken was that little hack that let you use VOIP over 3g.
Now where's teathering for us poor AT&T "customers"?
Bluetooth headset, iPad, 3G connection. Ding!
When is the iPhone getting that? The iPad can use a bluetooth keyboard, but the iPhone can't? What kind of crap is this?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
From what I understand the issue was with the approval proccess. These apps have been ready for a long time but nobody bothered to submit them until Apple gave the go ahead. Assuming the mobile provider doesn't balk at it I think things are good to go in all markets.
was that there was never a technical problem with this, but it was the face that ATT didn't want people to use VOIP over 3G because it competed with their voice offerings.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Still getting "fring calls only available on WiFi." message. Perhaps this will take a little time to roll out?
"I know this... this is a unix system" -- Jurrasic Park
Assuming the mobile provider doesn't balk at it
This is the reason for my question in the first place.
This could mean the beginning of the end of traditional telephony, ie. mobile carriers will soon simply become ISPs with no one using its voice/SMS/MMS services.
When is the iPhone getting that? The iPad can use a bluetooth keyboard, but the iPhone can't? What kind of crap is this?
And while we're at it.... why not bluetooth syncing (with SYNCH, FTP, & OBEX), DUN for the touch and iPad, BPP (printing), and Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP)?
This isn't just an Apple problem, by the way. This is an industry-wide problem right now: "bluetooth" means a lot of things and most of the market doesn't seem to care to specify what. The BSIG ought to require those using the Bluetooth logo to specify which profiles a device supports, for the sake of consumer awareness and market pressure.
Tweet, tweet.
AT&T now allowing iPhone VoIP calls over 3G
AT&T Greenlights VoIP For the iPhone
So, you can now make VOIP calls using your AT&T 3G network (which is dodgy) using your PHONE! Here is an idea. Why not use the phone part of your phone to make calls? If you use skype or whatever to call your friends and family in [insert distant country], then I see a use. But my calling circle is mostly local. Sounds interesting but will anyone use it?
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Yep, but the iPhone didn't allow it. Now you have both the provider and the platform allowing it.
I assume multitasking is still missing so how's skype/fring going to work? "Call me so I can log in"? "While in a skype call - let me log out, I need to check this links/mail/etc?"
Don't blame the vendor, blame the users that support the lock-in by supporting the vendor. Without them the vendor would be forced to change or go out of business.
Remember to maintain your supply of
I have tested one VOIP app named iCall Free voip. TERRIBLE over 3g. So far success of connection over 3G is less than 25% for me. And of that 25%, I have yet to have a placed call last more than 5 seconds before lagging out.
Uhh, people like free stuff
Wait!
So, first it's "Apple is evil, it;s so locked down! It sucks! They should open it!", and when they actually do open it up and enable new function that they had previously prevented (for whatever reason) it's "Apple is still evil! They will restrict it again!"
Which is it?
Do you want them to remove restrictions or not?
This restriction is lifted in SDK 3.2 for iPad, and it's not certain that it will be available on the iPhone. Also, as of now Skype does not have app for iPhone that is 3G enable in the app store.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
And since users have chosen the iPhone model and made it a success, they're obviously fine with it...so why blame anyone? Apple has chosen the appliance paradigm, and the users agreed with it.
is there such a thing as a data only plan w/ AT&T? how about other carriers?
i rarely talk voice on the phone. it sort of irks me that i way $50+ a month for it.
I was just pointing out that blaming a company for continuing to use a financially successful model is pointless. Successful businesses do what is good for business.
If someone really wants to blame someone for Apple's behavior, it should be the users that support Apple because they wouldn't be able to continue that behavior without the support they receive.
But I agree with you, if everyone on the inside agrees it is a good thing then the people on the outside need to stay out.
Remember to maintain your supply of
No. Go back and never restrict it to begin with! Apple is still evil until it was never evil from the beginning.
Let's see, synching over USB is pretty slow. USB has a raw transfer rate of 480 Mb/s. Bluetooth maxes out at 3 Mb/s. See the problem?
Last night I saw an ad for Vonage on the iPhone, advertising that you can use the Vonage VOIP service on your iPhone now. To have not only the app ready to go but the TV ad as well took some lead time I should think. Developers certainly knew this was coming.
The BSIG ought to require those using the Bluetooth logo to specify which profiles a device supports, for the sake of consumer awareness and market pressure.
They have standardized a series of icons indicating support for headsets, input devices, file transfer, etc. If you use those icons, you have to be supporting specific profiles.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Google Voice never used VoIP, it was just a front-end for viewing your messages and contacts- when you wanted to make a phone call thru the app, it just inititiated a POTS call to a nearby toll-free number, which made the connection to their backhaul.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Now don't go getting all biblical on us. Won't work because we understand recursion.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There is the HTML5 web app for google voice... not an app, but it works...
3.1 million activations by AT&T in the US this last quarter. Oh, those poor sheep!
If you're on the AT&T network, you have to abide by their conditions. I'm presuming either that AT&T has decided to open things up -- that the $60 for their unlimited data is enough -- or that Apple has plans of moving to other networks during the life of iPhone OS 3.2.
I agree. I was in the hospital recently, and the pretty nurse happened to notice that I had an iPhone. She was very curious about it. I showed her e-mail, and the browser, and google maps, and IHeartRadio, and she decided there and then she'd go and buy one. She came back the next day and waved it at me. Now, she's a nurse, she's reasonably clever, but not computer person. She does have a computer, and knows how to dock the phone with iTunes. Does she want a philosophical discussion about open v. proprietary? No. It's just got to work.
That's a really good point, and I can see why that means that you wouldn't want to use bluetooth as your primary means of moving large media files between devices. And then, if you're going to go with a cable, I guess everything else is redundant.
Thing is, though, redundancy can be pretty nice for the consumer. If you've forgotten your cable, it might not be the time to download a few movies onto your iPod, but it might be nice to still be able to move a podcast or two, your calendar, some ringtones, and a few new contacts.
Tweet, tweet.
Apple COULD set things up so you could do a MobileMe type sync (Address Book, Calendar) to your computer instead of having to go through MobileMe as an intermediary. That would be very nice. I have to say, since I got MobileMe I really don't sync my iPhone as much as I should, for backups, so the over the air sync actually fulfills a lot of the needs.
I can certainly understand why they don't support Bluetooth sync for anything else though.
Since Google Voice is not, and never has been, a VoIP service, I can't imagine this would have any effect.
Further, since they now have an HTML5 web-based app that does pretty much everything you'd want out of a Google Voice app, I'm not sure there is much need for such an app.
I know, it has to be one of the other. The world is Black or White, Good and Bad. There has to be GOOD or BAD.
There is a serious problem with people who think like this.
Agreed - but also blame the places that give media coverage almost solely to the Iphone, whilst ignoring the many (more popular) products like those from Nokia that don't follow this model. Then we get Slashvertisements like this, where Apple are then wowed for removing these restrictions.
My 5800 phone recently added kinetic scrolling in a firmware update - shall we have a front page story for every little thing like that, I wonder...
No they can't, because most phones let you run whatever applications you want, from any download site (you know, how it used to be, with old fashioned desktop and laptop computers, remember that?) without needing permission from the manufacturer.
Tell that to all those locked down handsets that can't use ringtones due to a carrier restriction, not a technical one - to force you to buy ringtones from Verizon and AT&T etc.
The iPhone is not unique in having non-technical restrictions placed on it - the phone market is not a typical fully open environment to start with - something hopefully Android will change.
Why should there be a marginal cost to a phone call? There isn't - once you're paying for the infrastructure, it's free.
Costs of maintaining and more importantly expanding the capacity of the infrastructure are directly tied to usage, though: each call connected goes through at the opportunity cost of another potential phone call. Having some kind of economic feedback go through the system based on usage makes a certain amount of sense.
Of course, nobody likes being on the meter all the time, particularly if costs for small uses of service are large (SMS, anyone?), or if costs go up dramatically with even marginal overuse (overage charges are pretty much usurious).
Tweet, tweet.
Awesome post. It is amazing how many people I run across that think everyone needs every feature of every device. For the most part people want to get email and browse the internet. There only other require is that it works and they don't have to read a book or invest a ton of time to learn to use it. They do not care about 90% of the features
I know this is Slashdot, so I won't even ask if you got her phone number, did you at least get her IPhone's IP or IMEI address? :)
They'll continue to be evil until they stop requiring all apps to be signed by Apple before you can install them.
The device fills a gap, and it seems a lot of people were stuck there until this device came along. Why do we have to wave our torches and pitchforks outside the fence when we could simply let these people have the all the tech they will ever need in a sensible form factor (and leave us alone)? We will still have our toys anyway (Android, Nokia N800 et al), and to an extreme, in that same form factor if one is determined enough.
If there ever comes a time when they will need us say, to do some jailbreaking (there is enough documentation -- and warnings against it), just remember to look annoyed, as usual =)
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Apple aren't evil per se, they're a corporation. If people don't like their products they're free to not buy them, hack them, make their own, or bitch and moan. Hardware I buy is _my_ hardware however, (unless I sign some contract waiving my property rights) and I'll do whatever the fuck I want to with it.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
The only AT&T phone I've ever had that wouldn't let me set the ringtone as an mp3 from bluetooth or usb was the iPhone. All the (6 to 8ish) other phones I had let me get a song on there some how and use it.
Local music(to upstate NY). http://gnarfel.com/ radio.
Why do you have a problem with that? The hypothetical person you mentioned just seems to think Apple is evil. It's quite possible to hate them enough to bitch that it's locked down and then complain they'll probably just lock it back down once they open it up. The two aren't logically inconsistent. In fact they go together extremely well.
Am I the only one who's seeing this as a desperate attempt by AT&T to keep iPhone owners loyal to them out of "good will" for not being so locked down once the iPhone is available on Verizon's network?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
They very well might, but the argument always seems to be "they should open it up!" and when they actually do open up a little it's not "good start!" it's more aspersions that they want to control your life at every turn.
Does she want a philosophical discussion about open v. proprietary? No. It's just got to work.
Right. I agree entirely that she doesn't want that discussion, but that is pretty much the point. Unless and until the average user is educated about the implications of open vs. proprietary software we will continue to suffer the chains of proprietary software.
I believe this is Stallman's entire argument, one that he believes has already shaped much of the past two decades by the insistence of having access to open software.
Yeah, but what about at least being able to synch things like calendars, the address book, etc? That's not a large amount of data to shift by Bluetooth, especially once it's been diffed first, so that only changes are transferred. Being able to do that wirelessly is a necessary feature for me: I don't want to carry around even more cables than I already have to. How come I can do that with my Nokia cellphone and my Apple laptop (and it takes under a minute), but am not allowed to do it between an Apple iPhone and the same Apple laptop? That just doesn't make sense. OK, I get the whole idea of a single, simple unified UI for synching, but a "Wirelessly synch only Contacts, Calendar and Notes" button shouldn't be too much of a stretch for the UI wizards at Apple, surely? iSync already has all the code in place.
Also, Bluetooth file transfer between phones is something I personally use a lot. My current understanding (but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is that the default BT stack on the iPhone doesn't do that either, so that's a big ol' "No Sale" for me right there. Why not just include a proper Bluetooth stack and let the user decide how he/she wants to use it? After all, the hardware's already there in the phone. The only reason I can think of is that there's a reluctance on the part of Apple due to a fear that people might Bluetooth songs to each other. That, and the fact that the current arrangement probably encourages take-up of MobileMe subscriptions. Neither of these possible reasons is in the interests of the actual phone user.
And for the record, I do buy Apple laptops almost exclusively, and own an iPod, and like them a lot - I'm not trying to troll here. It's just that this is one of the biggest remaining reasons why I won't be buying an iPhone, at least in its current incarnation: it's just too limited for my purposes.
Actually, they (Google Voice) would just call you. (as opposed to your phone placing an outbound call).
As far as I know, at least.