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Skype Officially Available For Android

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the can-you-hear-me-now dept.

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.

21 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. At last! by metageek · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

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    metageek
    1. Re:At last! by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

      proper carriers? never. in usa 3g use is disabled, apparently. outside of usa 3g is a go. blame the carriers if you're in usa - and also skype, since skype could have released it in a totally connection-neutral form. but they didn't.

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      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:At last! by generalhavok · · Score: 3, Informative

      If I recall, no US carrier has ever allowed VOIP traffic on 3g. On my AT&T iPhone, Skype has to use WiFi. Appears to be the same case on my Verizon Droid too. I recently went on a trip to Russia. I bought a cheap SIM card with a data plan for my (jailbroken) iPhone, and just out of curiosity, I launched Skype, it it let me place a call right over 3g! That saved me a lot of money for calling my family back home. Not to mention that cell phone plans and data is cheaper there than in the US too. Amazing what some real competition in a market can do.

    3. Re:At last! by digitalchinky · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:At last! by MobyDisk · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. Cool by Pojut · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

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    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:Cool by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Informative

      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?

      Yes, but mostly during a call, and a tiny bit less when idle. When the phone is idle, the main CPU is basically stopped and drawing very little power. Having Skype in the background does nothing to affect this as it's also waiting for a control datagram and thus blocked waiting.

      However, the phone may be maintaining a data channel waiting for the datagram to come - this can involve a bit more power from the modem to keep the channel alive, and a tiny bit of main CPU to handle higher layer data connection administrivia (keep-alives and the like).

      But during a call, the power goes up a lot. During a normal voice call, the main CPU again shuts down as it's not needed for the most part and the audio is routed direct to the modem where it's compressed, encoded and sent over the air by dedicated hardware. Using something like Skype, however, means the audio has to go tot he main CPU, where the Skype application then encodes it into packets, and those packets are then passed to the OS (also running on the main CPU) as network data. It goes down the network stack, then down to the data port of the modem where the modem then packages it for over the air. But an active data connection also costs more power, and the main CPU is active during a VoIP call but idle during a normal voice call, both of which add significant drain to the battery.

      If you're on the phone a lot, VoIP may require you to carry an extra battery. If you're like me who hardly makes a call longer than 30 seconds a couple of times per day, you won't notice the extra drain.

  3. More detail... by GraemeDonaldson · · Score: 4, Informative
    • If you're in the US, only WiFi for you (presumably doesn't apply if you have a Verizon device with their bundled version)
    • If you're in China or Japan, no Skype for you!
    • Android 2.1+ required
    • Minimum screen res of 320x480 required

    Also, it's 9MB, there's a link to the .apk for those of us with metered data plans: com.skype.raider.apk.

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    I think, therefore I am. I think?
  4. access rights? by mercurized · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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..

  5. So we like open source, but not open protocols? by anti-NAT · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

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    The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
    1. Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols? by _merlin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because at the core, they're cheapskates. MS Office costs money while OpenOffice doesn't, so it's convenient to find other supporting reasons to hate MS Office. OTOH, they see Skype and think "free calls!" so all is forgiven.

    2. Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols? by forkazoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      It's not that we love closed protocols. We don't. We simply hate the phone company more.

    3. Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols? by Vintermann · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In this case, the closed and proprietary VoIP protocol enables people to work around price discrimination on closed and proprietary wires.

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      xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
    4. Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols? by Duradin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Skype is a lot like Flash when it comes to slashbots.

      Before Apple said "no Flash on our devices" Flash was absolutely worthless and evil.

      As soon as Apple said no Flash on their devices Flash was a saint in the process of being martyred by evil tech-heathens.

      So in any other context (or previous threads) Skype is the epitome of the corruptness and wastefulness (OMG it uses bandwidth even when you're not talking!!!) of closed source. Now that it is available to the droidbois it is the symbol of freedom, sticking to the (telecom) man.

    5. Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols? by shish · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why do the slashdot crowd

      If you're going to generalise all of slashdot as a single entity with a single opinion, why not ask yourself? You are part of it :P

      rally against closed and proprietary data formats like MS Word documents, but not closed and proprietary VoIP protocols?

      Personally I'm not so much anti-closed as anti-suck. Closedness sucks politically, so I generally prefer open; but in this case all the other VoIP products suck technically and to a much larger degree

      --
      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
  6. Re:Skype? have had it for over two weeks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. Re:US only? by delinear · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  8. But how do you quit? by Cormacus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    Mon chien, il n'a pas du nez. Comment scent-il? TrÃs mauvais!
  9. Re:Am I missing something? by PPalmgren · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  10. Google Voice by EasyRhino · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  11. App permissions? by Graftweed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?