Fring VoIP on iPhone First Take

IanFogg | April 16, 2008, 03:50 PM

A beta of Fring has just been launched for Apple's iPhone. The downside is that it's only available for jailbreaked iPhones (ie those that have been hacked to allow unauthorised third party software to be installed).

Quick observations, prior to trying it out:

• Skype calls on iPhone are now possible.
• As VoIP applications are not going to be allowed on the official iPhone application store, Fring has nothing to lose in releasing its application for jailbreaked phones now.
• The limitations on official iPhone applications look like they will give a prolonged lease of life to the unofficial jailbreak community. Essentially, tight restrictions on the official development SDK are leading to a black market situation with the jailbreak folks. I'm slightly surprised here: I've not been wildly impressed with any of the unofficial applications so far and prior to February had been expecting Apple's iPhone SDK to be jailbreak's death knell.
• Fring is not the first commercial application to be released for use with the jailbreak installer (see Devicescape), but with the official option looming, Fring won't open flood gates to commercial apps on jailbreaked iPhones unless developers are unable to do what they want with the official SDK.
• Consumers will be drawn to Fring for IM text chat as much, if not more, than for its VoIP abilities.
• Fring for iPhone is still a beta. The jury is out on whether it will match or surpass the Series 60 version's quality, or whether iPhone Fring will be close or below the more cumbersome Windows Mobile port. All mobile applications are not created equal, even if they are from the same company and try to do the same thing: the various mobile phone OS's are better or worse at different things.
• It's iPhone only. The Touch lacks a microphone and speakers.
• Fring's VoIP will only work smoothly on WiFi. Edge latency is too poor for VoIP. On other mobile phone platforms, Fring switches to a push-to-talk type experience for VoIP on GPRS or Edge connections. Here, it looks like Fring have chosen to limit VoIP to WiFi only. When a 3g iPhone arrives, Fring should be able to work over the cellular connection too.

Everyone, please take note, I'm not against developing mobile applications or widgets. I like Fring.

But my view continues to be that given the cost of development of mobile software, and the highly balkanised handset market and mobile audience, creating a mobile application is only worth the trouble if the result delivers a product that couldn't be done with a cheap mobile website. Fring's VoIP and IM application meets those criteria.

More on mobile VoIP in this report:
Competing with Free Communications

and more on IM here:
Instant Messaging Growth, Quantifying the Link Between Skype, IM, and Social Networks