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Review: What does Skype 3G video calling for iPhone mean for FaceTime?
ANDY IHNATKO ai@andyi.com Dec 31, 2010 02:34AM
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Skype's video calls support the same in-call features as FaceTime...including screen rotations and switching between the iPhone and iPod Touch's multiple cameras.
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Friends and I have been debating the iPhone’s FaceTime feature practically since the day the first iPhone 4 shipped. We seem to agree on two things: that no other mobile video chat app is so simple, accessible, or attractive…
... and that we almost never use it.
FaceTime eliminates the complexity of other mobile video chat services but it’s still stuck with the same basic problem: you can only chat with people who are using the same chat service and software as you. FaceTime works great if you, your spouse, and both of your sets of parents each have an iPhone 4, an iPod Touch, or a Mac (oh, and your toddler also needs to be cooperative enough to only do adorable things when he or she is within reach of a WiFi network).
If only part of this system is in place, you’re still going to be stuck delivering radio commentary during the kid’s soccer game.
Today, Skype releases a new version of their iPhone chat client that adds video to its existing stable of features. with this move, Skype hasn’t exactly solved the problem of mobile video chat, but they’ve certainly made it a lot tougher for Apple to establish FaceTime as a new standard.
Video Skyping on the iPhone is a highly polished, reliable, and clean experience that’ll seem familiar to anyone who’s used FaceTime. if you’re in the middle of a Skype call — whether you’ve initiated or accepted one — you’ll see a new camera button on the call screen. Tap it, and you’re sending video seconds later. if the person on the other side of the call accepts your video chat, it’ll become a two-way call. Accepting an invitation to video chat is even simpler.
Overall, it’s hard to tell the difference between Skype Video and FaceTime. when you’re tied to a WiFi network, the picture and audio quality and the framerate are right up where you want them to be. the UI is simple and clean. when you rotate the iPhone during a chat, the video that turns up at the other end of the call switches from portrait to landscape on the fly. you can switch between the front and the rear camera, mid-chat.
It works just fine on the iPhone 3GS. and on iOS devices that lack cameras (like the iPad and previous generations of the iPod Touch) the app can still receive video.
Skype’s biggest advantage over FaceTime is its ability to work over a 3G network. I spent a couple of hours Skyping back to my office from a restaurant on an iPhone 4. 3G chats aren’t exactly flawless. when your iPhone has a strong connection to the network, the video is fluid and the audio is clean, though it’s naturally a step down from WiFi. Every time your connection suffers a drop in bandwidth, the audio will suddenly get watery and the framerate will drop to something akin to a slideshow.How to cancel your facetime account. Facetime for ipad and netscreen firewall.
But the critical test is the app’s (and the AT&T network’s) ability to maintain a call. I maintained the chat for more 51 minutes before the call dropped.
3G video Skyping comes at a surprisingly low cost, too. 51 minutes of two-way audio and video cost me about a third of my battery’s charge. that seems about right for such a CPU- and WiFi-intensive operation.
In that time, my iPhone sent and received 147 megabytes of data. But that might not be a typical scenario. I wasn’t chasing a kid around a yard ... it was a conversation between a TV screen playing a movie and a guy eating a sandwich. Skype’s best guesstimate of the app’s typical throughput is 600 kilobits per second. at that rate, my 51 minute call would have used up about 224 megabytes of the 2 gigabytes of data that’s included in the basic monthly data plan. So as an electronic security camera, Skype on the iPhone could get expensive — but as a way to say goodnight to your kids from 1000 miles away, it’s quite reasonable.
Overall, the addition of video to the Skype iPhone app is a no-lose enhancement. it very nearly offers iPhone users complete functional parity with the features available to desktop Skypers. the new app turns the iPhone into just another Skype machine that can talk with anything else on the Internet that’s running Skype.
But the very best feature of Skype for iPhone, and its most important advantage over FaceTime, is one it had even before today’s update: Skype gives you people to actually talk to.
Recently, Tango emerged as a new player in mobile video chat and everybody seemed impressed that the company had managed to sign up three million subscribers in a short span of time. Tango’s call quality could most charitably be described as “functional,” but any usable multiplatform mobile video chat client was a welcome arrival.
Cool. But Skype already has 125 million international users and it’s the de facto standard for digital telephony. if the person you want to talk to already has an account on any service, it’s most likely going to be Skype. and now you can have real, face-to-face chats with any of these people from your iPhone.
So where’s video-enabled Skype for Android? Skype promises that it’s “a priority” for 2011. the sole stumbling block is the need to optimize the app for the multiple flavors of Android handsets on the market.
Clearly, we can score this release as a big win for Skype. still, I want to be reserved in my praise. with FaceTime, Apple demonstrated that the features, the network, and the technology for mobile video chat were all there. with the new version of their iPhone app, Skype has given us all of those things, plus an enormous international user base.
Now, all I need to do is prove to myself that I have any interest whatsoever in doing video chat from my iPhone.
I think if Skype really wants to win this battle decisively, they should start shipping the app as part of a complete package solution. for someone to really embrace mobile video chat, they need to have all of the components that make it work: the right phone, the right app, the right network…and either a baby or a cute dog, so you’re regularly motivated to spontaneously send live video to people.
Review: What does Skype 3G video calling for iPhone mean for FaceTime? - Chicago Sun-Times