Skype Officially Available For Android

After a lot of speculation, Arvisp writes "Skype has released an official Android version. It allows calling via 3G and WiFi." One step closer to the carriers being just... carriers.

Comments

At last!

[metageek]

At last! but how soon are carriers going to block its traffic?

Re:At last!

[digitalchinky]

The right decision? You actually support carriers that drip feed you bandwidth because they've long since gotten used to twisting every last cent from your wallet - just so you can have the pleasure of consuming ever decreasing amounts of a service that is active 24/7 regardless of actual use.

Understand the tech behind the scenes and you'll be outraged - think executive golden parachutes rather than infrastructure upgrades.

I live in some random Asian country, over 3.5G I routinely see 200+ kilobytes per second. No caps, unlimited, all for about $27 USD per month. Technology is not the problem here.

Re:At last!

[MobyDisk]

If using more bandwidth costs the cell carriers more money, perhaps they should charge people for using more bandwidth. This is the only industry I've ever heard of where when demand exceeds supply, they simply refuse to increase capacity.

Quiz: If a bean farmer harvests 1 million beans per month, and they sell out the first day, which of the following would the bean farmer do?
A) Only sell beans to customers who use specific kinds of plates. This would limit the number of beans customers demanded to an amount they can provide. Since there is no way for the seller to know what kind of plates people have, they must pressure manufacturers of plates to enforce the rules. When pressed on the issue, complain that the only way to produce more beans would be to buy more land and seeds, which are expensive.
B) Buy more land and seeds and produce more beans.

Any reasonable farmer would choose option B. They would put together a plan, see how much more land they could afford to buy, and how many more beans they can produce on that land. For reasons beyond my understanding, telecom companies choose option A. They tell people that 3G has limited bandwidth, and limit their customers to using it for specific applications. But of course, 3G has no idea what application is using the bandwidth, so they make the software refuse to use the 3G connection even though it can use it and no one would ever know. Option B would be to build more cell towers and upgrade their bandwidth.

Cool

[Pojut]

It would be interesting to see how this affects battery life. I love my Eris, but the battery life on the stock battery is pretty suck. Would something like Skype drain a battery faster than calling someone using the 'phone' portion of the device?

access rights?

[mercurized]

I am still confused as of why that application wants access to all my accounts on the phone, and even wants to be able to use those other accounts as authentification method to some other unspecified purposes..

So we like open source, but not open protocols?

[anti-NAT]

Why do the slashdot crowd rally against closed and proprietary data formats like MS Word documents, but not closed and proprietary VoIP protocols?

Re:US only?

[delinear]

I see it in the marketplace in the UK - "Free *Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G or WiFi." Haven't tried downloading it as I'm not currently in a WiFi spot and my data connection is rubbish at work, but it looks like the genuine article.

But how do you quit?

[Cormacus]

The idea of voip calling over WIFI is kindof nice, but this app rubs me the wrong way immediately with its lack of a "quit" button. Once you start it up, it sits there in the background until you reboot your phone (or go kill the app from the settings menu, I know). I wouldn't go as far as to call this "sinister" but it isn't exactly customer friendly, either.

Re:Am I missing something?

[PPalmgren]

Voice traffic is very small when in a data format, and no, data is much cheaper. Assuming a megabyte a minute (which is probably on the high end), 5 gigs at $30/mo is 2000 minutes. My 1400 minute family plan is $80/mo.

I think this is why carriers are instituting data tiers.

App permissions?

[Graftweed]

As much as I love the idea of an easy to use and ubiquitous VoIP application that I carry with me everywhere in my pocket -- insane 3G data rates and prorietary protocols notwhithstanding -- I have to question some of the permissions it's requesting.

Maybe this is due to me not fully understanding the Android permissions model, in which case I hope someone will clarify what these mean, but aren't these a little overreaching?

Read and write contact data - I assume this means the Skype app stores contact data in the phone's address book, but it also gives it access to all my other contact data (local or google contacts).

Coarse location - In my experience coarse location, when requested in heavily populated areas, is just as accurate as fine (GPS) location. Why does Skype need to know exactly where I'm standing in order to route my VoIP calls? The desktop application seems to do fine without it.

Act as an account authenticator, manage the accounts list, use the authentication credentials of an account - Does Skype use the Android accounts and sync framework, like a regular Google account does? And, like the contact data, I'm pretty sure this also means it has access to all the other Google account authentication credentials stored on the phone.

I'm pretty sure all of these permissions are requested for legitimate reasons, but from what I can understand it also means the Skype app has access to some pretty sensitive information, basically your whole Google account. Am I correct?