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Google Talk Enables Video Chat On Android Phones
MojoKid writes "Google recently launched Google Talk with video and voice chat for Android phones. With the service, users will be able to video or voice chat with their friends and family directly from an Android phone. Calls can be placed over 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi connections. According to Google, the new features will first roll out to the Nexus S phones over the next few weeks as part of the Android 2.3.4 over-the-air update. Google Talk with video and voice chat will launch on other Android 2.3 and higher devices in the future as well. The video demo in the article shows it in action."
What a clever new functionality!
>With the service, users will be able to video or voice chat with their friends and family directly from an Android phone.
Well, fuck! I was hoping I could use the phone in a professional setting.
Wasnt that available in the N900 like a full year ago? And skype too. Too bad the front camera of it is not the greatest, but still, for a year and half device should not be so bad.
The Auto-Airbrush application will take your image and in real time smooth out blemishes, do your makeup or shave your stubble (depending on the gender setting you choose), and fix your hair (or even apply a toupee or wig if you like.) By guaranteeing that the users of Google Talk for Android will look nice on camera, or at the very least, like actual human beings, Google will get a much needed leg-up on Apple's FaceTime, which is underutilized because no one wants to get cleaned up just to talk on the phone.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Typical of a fragmented community. Let's roll it out to googles supported phone first and let the other users pray their device mfgr or even the carrier decides to release an update. Android needs updates released directly from google pushed to the devices at the same time.
It's a prurient euphemism when you don't actually wear them on your wrist.
robotsanywhere lets you do this for any android 1.5 or higher, download it. You can also use it to steer robots, but just put it in camera mode and then make a normal voice call and you can do that. One way only though.
Has anyone tried forwarding calls from google voice to google talk to see if this receives the calls?
Only some gtalk clients seem to have that ability - that's the only reason I'm asking.
What everyone seems to be forgetting is that you can chat with any PC, tablet, or other phone that supports GTalk......That's the significance of it all.
I bet the carriers are peeing themselves at this point.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As a Nokia N900 owner, I'm really impressed with the front facing video camera and skype integration. Skype is pre-installed, and Firefox mobile 3 is the default browser too. (Firefox 4 mobile is has officially been released for 1 month now for Maemo & Android and seems nice and faster too). Yesterday I did a 3.5 g skype video call that went really well between Europe and the USA, in the middle of a national holiday in the capital; the folks back home were impressed.
I digress. I like how the N900 profile feature lets me set availability to groups of apps like Skype, Jabber, SIP, etc. paired with my common net-connections like home wifi & mobile 3g. The contact book shows me who is online and available options to contact them, (Skype w/ status, SIP, cell, IM etc.) Also notifications is pretty sweet. It is a very nice linux PIM piece o' hardware. I for one, am looking forward to the next Meego device, the N950; to be most-likely announced next month at the Meego conference. (Where Meego 1.2 will also become available for N900 devices as well).
http://maemo.nokia.com/features/contacts/
http://sf2011.meego.com/
personally, this is not the way I'd like to see things going. i use a smarthphone instead of a regular cell because it lets me communicate with *less* human interaction.
-Lod
I don't get it, the video chat is available right now or not? Or is just another: "look at what we are promising to get working in a few week!"
Apple said they would release FaceTime as a standard that others could implement, does anyone know if there is any non-Apple FaceTime software out there?
I've used FaceTime between my iPhone and a Mac, and it's quite nice, but it seems like it could be a big boon to someone to start selling FaceTime enabled video chat on the Android market.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
This is still using H264, as gtalk video used when first introduced? Or does it support webm or similar freely implementable codecs? And if yes to the latter, when can we see it working on Pidgin?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Google Chat allows me to phone landlines. Will this version allow that? If so, that's very very interesting.
it's nearly useless.
One of my few serious complaints about Android is a serious lack of BlueTooth support. Except for normal phone calls and streaming music you can all but forget it. My phone came with Qik, which does streaming video, but speaker phone ONLY, not even TRRS headphones. Well, unless I'm at home in a quiet room it's useless. If I'm at home in a quiet room I'll use Skype to video chat.
What's that? Skype is available for Android also?
Guess what? Same boat as Qik! That, and Skype is somewhat lacking in video support on Android next to their lack of BlueTooth support, oh, and a third party enabled Skype to work well so they labeled them as causing their product to do unintended things devaluing it, without actually stating what they did wrong (Fring) so they locked them out.
Unless they actually make BlueTooth, or at minimum TRRS headphones work it's another "almost but not good enough".
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I bought a Sony Ericsson 8 years ago that had video call capabilities. I didn't even try it once, and it never took off anywhere in the world despite a huge number of phones and networks supporting it. Instead, people used the extra bandwidth to check their mail, surf the web and download ringtones and themes. Last year Apple tried with FaceTime (does anybody use that?) and now it's Google's turn. I don't see that it will pick up this time either.
Kind of funny to see that this feature, which for so long was believed to be the communication of the future, turned out to be a fiasco when the future finally arrived. Apparently we just don't want to see each other when talking on the phone.
That's great news for anroid users! Instalacje przemysowe
For some "video chat" with the chick pictured in the article.
So where are all the Apple haters now? Apple didn't implement 3G video calls and all the Apple haters said Facetime wasn't "standard" so what about Google not implementing standard 3G video calling?
Your headphones are broken, or your device is. Skype works fine with the TRRS headset that came with my Nexus One, and it works fine with the PSP headset I picked up for $4 before Ultimate Electronics went out of business.
Possibly the headphones, I used my leftover iPhone ones, hadn't actually tried talking on them in a long time.
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it's nearly useless.
One of my few serious complaints about Android is a serious lack of BlueTooth support. Except for normal phone calls and streaming music you can all but forget it.
You were saying?,
Bluetooth File Transfer, formerly Medival Bluetooth FTP works fine without root on every phone I've had (HTC Dream, Motorola Milestone, HTC Desire Z).
If you've got root you can do a lot more. I think there may even be BT tethering w/o the requirement for Root access but I've never looked into this in any detail.
Perhaps you were thinking of an OS which competes with Android and has a lot of restrictions.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The problem with android phones and video chat is most android phones have the camera on the wrong side...
Easy fix, video chat in a mirror.
If your sitting there video chatting you cant be doing much else anyways, why not stand in front of a mirror. Ill take video chat on my android please!
I hope this is implemented on the older droid phones that don't have multiple cameras.
There are times where I want to show something (a new gadget, a hardware failure, or a stupid dog trick) while talking to someone.
Still no Google Talk for linux
http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html
No, I'm talking about Android and Bluetooth. Until audio is used beyond just regular phone calls and music streaming I'm keeping my perspective. The general overall speech to text engine? No Bluetooth, any voice application that isn't a normal phone call? No Bluetooth. Android is incredibly limited on it's audio Bluetooth support beyond the basics. My really really crappy Motorola Q cleaned up where Bluetooth was concerned, then promptly locked up, crashed, or overheated and generally all around sucked at everything else. My old Kyocera, the Moto Q, and my BlackBerry let me simply hit the button on my headset and say who I wanted to call. My Android based HTC phone is by far the absolute best phone I've ever used not counting its limited Bluetooth support.
I am root on my EVo. I have FTP'ed over Bluetooth, it's nice but I generally use the USB cable because it's faster, I haven't teathered over it, I use WiFi, I've tried teathering over USB, but to be frank I gave up on troubleshooting quickly and easily because WiFi already worked perfectly.
All things said, every phone I've mentioned thus far stomps the 3G iPhone I had where Bluetooth is concerned.
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I've been able to pass any audio via BT on my HTC Desire and Motorola Milestone to a laptop? The inbuilt video player and Rock Player automatically passed through audio to a Windows laptop.
What are you on about.
The general overall speech to text engine?
Has nothing to do with BT?
it's nice but I generally use the USB cable because it's faster
BT FTP is for the times where you don't have a cable or are sending to another device. Doesn't happen every day but it does happen so it's a very nice feature to have.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I've been able to pass any audio via BT on my HTC Desire and Motorola Milestone to a laptop? The inbuilt video player and Rock Player automatically passed through audio to a Windows laptop.
What are you on about.
That's nice, I don't have a Windows laptop shoved in my ear when I want to try a really cool video conference. Having one around would sort of defeat the purpose of wanting to do that with my phone. It doesn't stream music to my normal Jawbone Bluetooth headset either, but I'm not complaining about that because that's what my Cy-Fy speaker rig is for. It does an excellent job with that BTW, but I don't want to use that for Qik or Skype either.
The general overall speech to text engine?
Has nothing to do with BT?
No, but it should and does on other phones, especially older pre-smart phones and voice dialing, it's like modern phones lost features older ones have. It's audio, and it's audio that would be more easily used while looking at the phone instead of having it pressed to your face, or could benefit people who need to remain hands free. Do you work for Google on the Android project and don't want the extra work or something?
it's nice but I generally use the USB cable because it's faster
BT FTP is for the times where you don't have a cable or are sending to another device. Doesn't happen every day but it does happen so it's a very nice feature to have.
No argument there. I would, and have used it in a pinch. Don't get me started on my other Bluetooth rant about how it's largely overlooked, undervalued, and Logitech doesn't produce enough mouse or game control models that support it.
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