Symbian in Motion

fring by fringland Ltd.

by Zach at 4:28 pm | January 30th, 2007 | Category: Application Reviews, Freeware, VoIP & IM

Skype users can start to relax now that fring is available for the N80 - with ‘preview’ versions available for other S60 3rd devices. As if you don’t already know, fring (beta) is a free app that allows you to use the VoIP and IM functionality of both Skype and GoogleTalk on your mobile device. Unlike most other Skype solutions for S60 3rd, fring does not require Skype to be running on your PC. There has been a great deal of buzz on various forums since the first S60 3rd version was released early last week. Discussion has gone back and forth but the big question is, “does it work”? Well I’ve been testing it for over a week now and on my N80IE with 6.032.0.38 firmware not only does it work, but it works very well!

To get the app you must fill in some simple info on the fring download page and you will quickly receive an sms with a link to download the app. A few things to note with regards to the installation: First, you should close all other apps while installing, setting up, and using fring. Also, I’ve had the best results with installing fring to my phone memory and I expect that you will find the same. When you run fring for the first time it will walk you through each step of the setup process. Once you’ve finished the setup, I recommend that you exit fring and restart your phone before trying to make any calls.

Upon opening fring it will connect automatically if your preferred connection type is available otherwise it will prompt you to select an available connection. You are automatically logged in to your configured services and your contacts are displayed along with their current status.

For testing purposes, I created a Skype account called “Fring Test” and you can see in the image above that fring sees me currently logged into my PC by displaying the green logo to the left of the user name. From there it’s quite simple to initiate a call by selecting [Options] and then [Call] or just pressing the select key with the appropriate contact highlighted.

Beginning a chat session is just as easy and while typing on both ends of the conversation below I found that fring loads new messages quite quickly.

Options for the app include displaying or hiding contacts in your device’s phonebook, a contacts search function, the ability to change the connection type without having to restart the app, and the option to dial a SkypeOut call (SkypeOut credit required).

Although it is recommended that fring is used with WLAN and 3G, I’ve also had fair experiences using fring over EDGE. The voice quality is not quite as good as WLAN of course but it is usable. I could not test over 3G as my phone does not support US 3G networks but the voice quality over WLAN is very good - about as good as most VoIP services that I use with the integrated Internet Telephone app on my phone.

All in all, I’m very impressed with fring. This is still an early version and of course there are a few things that need to be ironed out on versions for various devices. I should note that the fring support team is very good and very responsive and helpful. The ease of setup, ease of use, and functionality of this app are top notch and it will only get better as new versions are released - and it’s free!

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