TruPhone Launches iPhone VoIP App, and It’s Missing a Feature
First, the good news. TruPhone, the UK mobile VoIP client I’ve written about before, has launched their client VoIP application for the iPhone and is available in the iPhone App Store.
Before this announcement, TruPhone has only been available for the Symbian platform which I’ve used on my Nokia phones. What does TruPhone do? Easy answer: it uses Internet telephony to route calls, making it very cheap to call internationally from your mobile phone. Because it uses Wi-Fi, TruPhone does not have any roaming charges and also allows you co make calls when you you’re in a cell phone dead spot.
Now the bad news: A limitation to the iPhone TruPhone application is that it only allows you to make calls while on a Wi-Fi hotspot, not over the 3G cellular data network. On the other hand, my Nokia phone running S60, while on 3G, can send and receive VoIP calls over TruPhone when on 3G *and* Wi-Fi.
I imagine this is due to the fact that Apple and AT&T crippled the iPhone’s ability to do VoIP calling while on the 3G network. Steve Jobs is okay with you VoIPing over Wi-Fi, but not 3G. Gotta love the US telcos cripling phones…yikes.
This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 10:23 am and is filed under mobile, nokia, tech news/notes, voip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Craig Hughes July 17th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I can understand why this has been implemented - the massive amounts data traffic would slow the 3G network down for others. Most operators state that unlimited data plans must not be used for voip, streaming video etc for this very reason.
For most people this surely isn’t that much of a problem. When you’re in your own country, calling your own country you will be using your inclusive minutes. If you want to call abroad you either find a WiFi hotspot and save money, or if it’s urgent, pony up the cash and don’t talk forever. When you go travelling you want to keep your data usage down as much as possible anyway because the carriers charge so much for data roaming, so it’s in your best interest to find a WiFi hotspot.