Mar 31, 2009 12:57 AM
28,312
Enter your username and password.
Apple's just about finished rolling out Skype for iPhone, and now US residents can go download the VoIP app for themselves.
Our quick test showed that voice quality is quite good—definitely on par or better than actual 3G calling over AT&T's network—and connects rather quickly. It's unfortunate that 2.2.1 doesn't have background notifications, so there's no way somebody could Skype you unless you had the app open all the time.
In an iPhone to iPhone Wi-Fi call test, Phone A heard Phone B perfectly clear, but the person on Phone A sounded like a robot with enunciation problems from Phone B's side. iPhone to Laptop worked perfectly fine, however.
What's also interesting is that voice calling only works when you're on Wi-Fi in the 2.2.1 firmware, popping up a restriction message if you're on 3G, but 9to5Mac says it works just fine in the 3.0 firmware. Not sure whether that's because the 3.0 developer's beta is less locked down, but it's one pretty good reason to risk the upgrade. We suspect that this hole is going to be locked down REAL soon, lest AT&T lose out on a bunch of minutes. [App Store]
Send an email to Jason Chen, the author of this post, at jchen@gizmodo.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Start a new discussion