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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.

10 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 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.

    2. 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
  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. 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 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.

    2. 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: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.

  6. 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.