Skype on the iPhone is here
by Volker Weber
Skype has landed on the iPhone. My first chat was with Stephan, who was already awake in Singapore. I also tested a call with the test center:
This was over WiFi, since I don't have a 3G iPhone to test with. Wink wink, Apple. :-) Call quality was not good, but workable. Will try again tomorrow. While the client has all the features I need, it is of course lacking one important feature: the iPhone won't let it run in the background. So you can contact your buddies, but they cannot contact you when you are doing other things with your iPhone. If you and your buddies all use iPhones, you need to strike it lucky that they are running the application at the same time as yourself.
Comments
I have Skype on my Treo 750 and it works good in 3G. Find a spot that has 3G consistantly and don't move and all is cool. The only other issue is that when Skype is running it's network activity uses ALOT of juice, so when you're done be sure to shut the app down or you'll find you have a dead battery. Running it on the charge cable in the car has worked fine, but I've noticed that the phone was quite warm after an hour or so. This makes me wonder about the RF finals and thier intended duty cycle... My thoughts lean towards caution, start the app, use it, close the app, and perhaps extend the perfomance and life of your device.
Not sure a wink will get Apple's attention :-)
as expected, Skype doesn't work with a german T-Mobile plan over 3G...
The "no background application" feature of the iPhone is going to become more and more of a pain in the ass.
The iPhone app only supports Wifi, so no use pleading for a 3G version Volker ;-)
It's so unstable, it falls over when you blow into the mic, no kidding. I call it a disappointment. Eagerly waiting for the next iteration.
Well, I'm using fring all the time on a Nokia E51 and besides the fact that sound quality is quite impressive I can use my jabber and ICQ account simultaneously. I'm not a hardcore Apple foe or friend but fring is running in the background and is even cappable to do calls in EDGE networks (at least on my Nokia).
So why don't you just try fring for the iPhone? :)
It crashes immediatly after launch.
And according to the reviews I'm not the only experiencing this behaviour.
Come on Skype, I know you can do it better. I'm waiting for a bug fixed version...
So, now it works! (I should check more ressources before posting things like that.)
There was a incompatibility with the Jailbreak. After an Update of "Mobile Substrat" Skype works fine.
First test on a WLAN Hotspot of T-Mobile was working - despite the wishes of t-mobile.
We'll see for how long.
Had downloaded it early in the morning and tried it out while on a cig. break. I've noticed vowe being online so I've sent him a short chat message.
Since I have a 1st gen. iPhone I did not bother to try out voice and since the wifi at work does skype not allow to sign in i was using edge.
The sign in and chatting seemed fine (even without a reply from vowe).
I am on an US imported iPhone (jailbroken) running 2.2.1 and using a T-mobile contract with an addon dataplan.
Audio quality is not the greatest but more than acceptable on a 1st gen iPhone, certainly much much better than using Fring or Nimbuzz.
I had issues however, starting an audio connection as the program was complaining about WiFi connection not being available.
Please note I had previously been signing in and chatting over WiFi.. :-/
Restarting the phone and closing other copies of Skype running on other computers solved the problem.
As a matter of fact, after over one year in preparation, my expectations for this release were perhaps a bit higher. Push notification remains a "must" for this app to be of any significance..
Uhhh. I take it all back. Apparently, jailbroken phones need a little update. Thanks to Stefan Weigand for pointing that out. It works pretty darn well now! Simply go into Cydia, search for "substrat" and update to 0.9.2803-1 or newer.
Yesterday installed it on my 1G iPhone no problems so far. Calls with WLAN and Chat with GPRS. My Provider is O2. Although it is jailbroken it seems i need no upgrade
