Symbian in Motion

This holiday season MOBIVOX is the gift that keeps on giving. GiftVOX is a very cool concept that allows you to enroll friends and family with MOBIVOX for free. I reviewed MOBIVOX back in October but in case you missed it, it’s a service that allows you to make free or cheap calls to and from anywhere in the world. There are no apps to install and MOBIVOX users can always call each other for free. Sweet!

GiftVOX allows you to do all of the legwork in terms of opening your gift recipient’s account, adding contacts (up to 15 initially) and even adding credit to their account if you choose! You can add any whole-dollar amount to their account between $1 and your total balance. GiftVOX is perfect for friends and family who aren’t - shall we say - technically inclined. I know that my grandparents could never open a MOBIVOX account on their own but using GiftVOX I can have them up and running in minutes.

Read the full press release

I just gave GiftVOX to my dad so let’s see if he uses it - and how he uses it. Maybe I can even coerce him into writing a few words about his experience with the service for an update post. :)

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MoIP is good, MoIP is great; but let’s be honest here for a moment. Even with the most premium MoIP services you still have to sacrifice some quality to get those free calls and super-low rates. I find that I rarely use MoIP (Mobile VoIP) these days. When I make international calls the odds are that I’m going to be speaking to someone with an accent much different than mine. As such, I need all the quality I can get to ensure that we have the best possible chance of understanding each other. This holds even more water when it comes to calls from my mobile where audio quality is already decreased compared to most landlines.

Well MOBIVOX is a service that is taking a slightly different approach to international (or even local) calling. There’s no app to install and you’re not restricted to any particular type of device or service. Instead you are given the freedom to use MOBIVOX from any phone (mobile, landline, VoIP, MoIP) and call to any destination either for free or at a very low rate. So how does it work?

The first thing you need to do is sign up for their service. Once you create your account, you can import your contacts from a variety of address books. The last step in the setup process is obtaining a local access number(s). Local access numbers give you the ability to access the service with a local (ie free in many cases) call from any mobile or landline. Numbers are available in many countries so when you travel, simply grab a number from their site that is local to your destination and you’re off and running.

Dial an access number from a line that you have registered with MOBIVOX and you are recognized immediately. Now simply speak the name of the contact you would like to call or dial a number and your call is completed. That’s it! As mentioned above, you can access the service with your account from any phone. This is a nice feature that helps separate MOBIVOX from the pack. Simply call from any line, enter your account number and password and then place your MOBIVOX call. Most VoIP/MoIP services tether you to an app/device/PC so the freedom that MOBIVOX affords you is quite nice. (Shhhh - I even gave my account details to some family members who then used the MOBIVOX service to call me while I was traveling!)

When placing a call using MOBIVOX, if your destination contact is a MOBIVOX user as well and located in one of a fairly wide variety of regions the call is free. Period! If not don’t despair, their global rates are quite competitive. Because you are accessing the service locally, the rates are fixed and do not fluctuate based on call origin. Oh, and you can call your Skype contacts through MOBIVOX as well - for free!

In terms of quality MOBIVOX is fantastic. While I was in London recently I used a variety of different methods to make both local and international calls. MoIP, Skype, landlines, GSM and MOBIVOX. In all honesty I could not differentiate between the MOBIVOX audio quality and GSM quality. It’s that good.

The other thing that I really like about MOBIVOX is that you don’t get a new number to use with the service. I can’t even begin to imagine how many numbers I have as a result of services like MoIP, Grand Central, TalkPlus, etc. With each new number comes a new decision to make (Should I give it out? Is this the service that I’ll actually use?) and a new place to check your voicemail. MOBIVOX gives you the same ability to make cheap international calls but you keep your number. Yes that annoying mass email that you typically need to send out is no longer necessary; your contacts can still reach you at your existing number.

Of course there are some things that I would change but what service is perfect? One example is CID. When I make a call through MOBIVOX I would love for the recipient to see the number I have registered with the account on their caller ID display. As of right now, they get nothing. A test call to my mobile was received as “Call”. Also, unless I missed something I’d also like to see them offer a mobile site with access to all of the important features available on the standard site (such as call history and contact management). This would certainly offer a simply solution to those who travel and potentially could forget to get a local access number for their destination.

Like most competitive services these days MOBIVOX gives you some free minutes when you sign up so that you can get a feel for it before making any kind of commitment. You can also get additional free credit for signing up friends and family. Beyond that it’s a pay to play structure and credit and be added with any major credit card. My advice? Register an account, upload your contacts from Outlook or wherever else you might keep them, take the free minutes to check it out and see what you think. It’s obviously not a service that will appeal to everyone but I think that with the right marketing its ease of use, call quality and cheap rates might just translate into a success story.

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It’s been a long time coming but it has finally arrived and I couldn’t be more excited! Today Palringo has announced that their Symbian client officially supports third-party IM platforms such as ICQ, MSN, Gadu-Gadu, Yahoo, AIM and Google Talk (as their WinMob and PC clients already do).

Now you can exchange IMs, photo IMs and yes even vocal IMs (PTT) with all of your buddies on most popular IM networks. Vocal and photo IMs are delivered as links that the recipient can click on to see the photo or play the vocal IM!

The best part… It’s all still free!! I’ve already uninstalled every one of my other IM apps and I highly recommend you go to www.palringo.com to register a free account and then do the same. :)

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Palringo calls it “Vocal Instant Messaging” - I call it pretty damn cool! Palringo is a free app (currently in beta) for your mobile that provides you with presence, chat, and PTT functionality for S60 devices. Afraid that you don’t know enough S60 3rd users to make this app useful? Well there are also Win Mobile/Win2K/WinXP/Vista versions available and a java version in the works!

Palringo loads quite quickly and occupies a reasonable amount of RAM on your S60 3rd device. Once you open the app and enter your credentials (first time only) you may log in using a GPRS, EDGE, 3G, or WiFi connection. Your presence is immediately broadcast to your contacts once you log in and you are brought to your home screen where things like status and messages are displayed.

Moving over to the contacts tab, you will see a list of all of your contacts with their current availability status (and conveniently the customer service contact is listed there as well). Contacts are listed and added using a full email address. You can however, create a nickname that your contacts will see in place of your email.

To start a new chat session simply scroll to one of your contacts and click options to access chat. Chat works just as it should and it updates new messages VERY quickly.

At the top of the screen above, you will see three tabs. The current screen is the text chat tab but my favorite is the second tab - the “vocal instant messaging” tab. This is essentially PTT (walkie-talkie) that is delivered in near-real time. Simply hold down the joystick fire key and speak, then release the key when you’re done and your vocal instant message will be played for your contact almost instantly!

The third tab is for picture messaging where the app allows you to take a pic (from within the UI!) and instantly deliver it to your contact. Your contact can reply with chat, image, or vocal instant messages in the exact same way. There currently is no support for group chatting/PTT but perhaps we might see some group support in the future. UPDATE: Please see Etienne’s comment below regarding groups. I was in a bit of a rush as I posted this - lol My bad ;)

To be honest, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen this app before. Granted it’s in beta but it’s very stable and I LOVE that it works across so many platforms (Symbian, Win Mobile, Win2k/XP/Vista). Once a java app is released this is going to be one of the most accessible and versatile communications apps around! Definitely worth checking out… :)

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Quite some time ago, I reviewed what is now probably the most popular app of its kind: fring. Since then, you probably know that fring has added MSN to its list of supported services. What you might not know is that fring has just recently released version 3.01, which also supports GSM and SIP calling!

Now you can make calls to any landline/mobile phone over GSM AND via any number of VoIP SIP providers such as VoIPStunt, VoIPCheap, Gizmo and more. What’s more; I’ve made many successful calls through a variety of SIP providers using my EDGE connection! In terms of EDGE vs. WLAN quality, the difference was barely noticeable…

This is huge for fring - which is quickly becoming THE one-stop shop for S60 3rd voice communication and IM. And believe it or not, it’s still free!

:)

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