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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.
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At last! but how soon are carriers going to block its traffic?
metageek
Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of pay-as-you-go data plans with an android phone.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
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?
Living With a Nerd
Also, it's 9MB, there's a link to the .apk for those of us with metered data plans: com.skype.raider.apk.
I think, therefore I am. I think?
No 3G calling from the US---curse you Verizon!
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..
Why do the slashdot crowd rally against closed and proprietary data formats like MS Word documents, but not closed and proprietary VoIP protocols?
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Your skype is the Verizon blessed and hobbled version. It uses Verizon voice minutes for the first leg into the cloud. Therefore it's only useful in saving on international long distance charges. This new Skype can use WiFi.
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.
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.
Mon chien, il n'a pas du nez. Comment scent-il? TrÃs mauvais!
That depends. It says it supports wifi and there are wifi hotspots on practically every corner where I live and many of them are free and of course the wifi in my house is free for me to use. The carriers all (I believe all of them, anyway) require an "unlmited" (with varying defintions of unlimited) data plan with Android phones, so depending on how much data skype actually uses and how much you use for other stuff, it may still be a viable option if you're over on your voice minutes or whatever.
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.
Re: Allows calling via 3G and WiFi.
This was already available via the Google Voice app. It even has integration with the phone app to be the default method to make calls.
Trillian for Android (Beta)
I absolutely point-blank refuse to use Skype for exactly that reason.
So, what's a good VoIP client for Android? I have a legacy Gizmo SIP account I use with my Linux desktop.
I'm aware of IMSdroid, SIPdroid, Linphone and Fring, but I haven't seen anyone do a good comparative review.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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?
*shrug*
Let me preface this by saying that I'm 31 years old. I have been involved with computers since I was born. My first gaming system was an Atari 2600, and my first computer was a TRS-80 Model I with a Radio Shack cassette recorder, though friends variously had a TI99/4A, Atari 800, C64, or Apple ][. I've never attended college, finding formal education to be far too boring. I am not a Luddite.
And frankly, I don't know how any of that matters.
Moving right along:
I initially failed to see the hype surround cell phones, myself. I used to watch my boss fiddle with his old PalmOS Kyocera phone and think, "Gee, I can do all of that with the Handspring Visor that I have in my pocket, and the batteries last for a month!"
I used to swear, up and down, that if my boss didn't want me to have a cell phone badly enough to pay for it, that I wouldn't have one at all.
I used that Visor for a long, long time, with it rattling around in my pants pocket with a couple of pocket knives and a work-provided cell phone, protected only by its own built-in case. I miss its durability and battery life. (It still works and looks fine, even though it was a refurb even when I bought it around 2002.)
Then, I got an iPod Touch. I didn't particularly want one, but it was a free rebate item on a fancy Netgear switch that we'd bought a couple of at work, and I ended up with it.
And, lo, the iPod was useful! I found myself looking at all manner of things wherever there was Wifi, and having a hell of a good time doing it. So much easier, it was, than using my laptop to do the same thing. And instead of calling back to someone at the shop when I needed a pinout for some obscure device that I found myself working on, I could just fucking Google it myself.
So when the Droid came out, I decided I'd jump in, because it'd let me do the same things in a far more open fashion, almost anywhere. Doing so was a big deal for me: Because I work for a Verizon retailer, and I didn't want to carry two phones, I had to buy the thing at cash value ($529, IIRC) if I still wanted the company to float the voice plan. And pay the $30 monthly fee for data coverage.
And you know what? I use it all the time. I've got manuals stored on it, Google at the ready, and damn near every manner of data available to me that I'd have with a desktop PC, but without lugging a desktop.
Typically, it's way, way faster than dialup. I've seen downloads come in at a measured 180 kilobytes per second. Things slow down in areas that are either very dense or very sparse, but that's OK -- I'm not ever without bandwidth.
And in terms of overall utility: I'm way more productive (read: less frustrated) at work, because when I'm out and about doing my technical things, I can find the data I need. Whether configuring a decade-old quad video switcher, or finding the relative headings of local TV stations to aid in aiming a TV antenna (and a compass!), or digging up a manual on some newfangled dispatch communications console, I've got what I need accessible wherever I'm at. One day, I needed an accurate frequency counter: I downloaded one, and it worked great, eliminating hours of work. One day, I needed a flashlight, so I downloaded one of those. Another day, I needed to calculate the voltage drop on a 2,800 foot run of 8 AWG copper, so I Googled a Javascript calculator for that. And then, I needed a bubble level. Or a free Wifi channel to set up a new AP. Et cetera, and so on, and so forth.
It does this stuff.
I haven't regretted paying for this thing for a second, even though the $30 data plan is a lot more than my wife pays to my mom-in-law for her own phone (much like your own wife) and the initial cost was way more than I felt I wanted to spend on such a thing.
If you can't find the utility in a gee-whiz cell phone, you're either not trying hard enough, too tied down to a desk to care, or stuck thinking about the thing as a telephone/ball-and-chain instead of all that is Teh Intarwebs.
Kid-proof tablet..