That explains the iPhone 5 being discontinued. Wow
So if the front cam is still capable of taking 1.2 MP/ 720p quality pics, I guess it's an issue of HOW FT transmits everything thru data or software ? Hopefully they'll fix this later. A statement from Apple regarding this would be nice being that its a feature to where people heavily depend on this that are distant from relatives.
Based on your post it doesn't sound like you read the article. You should definitely read it as it explains it all. In the past Facetime worked by connecting two iOS devices through a secure peer-to-peer connection (or something along those lines, I read the article a few weeks ago and haven't reread it since). Apple was sued for violating a patent that was held by a patent troll claiming that they were using the technologies that the patent covers without permission. Since they lost in court, they had to change the way Facetime works by routing Facetime calls through a relay server. Instead of creating a direct connection like it did before, Facetime calls now go through multiple relay servers before connecting to the other person who you're trying to Facetime. Since calls now must pass through these servers calls take longer to connect, video quality is degraded significantly since it has to pass through multiple servers instead of just one direct connection like it did before, and the failure rate of calls is increased.
Apple was given two options: either shutdown Facetime or find a workaround so that they don't violate the patent. It's a lose-lose situation for Apple. All they can do now is wait for the patent to expire so that they go back to their original way of connecting Facetime calls.
All of this is detailed in the article I linked to in my previous post.
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Apple website still states FaceTime HD 720p for iPod/ipad/mac models. Surely users could demand a refund or sue for misleading info? Seems stupid of Apple.
It'd be stupid to sue Apple over this. As I already said, this is not something that they wanted to do. Either they did this or shut down Facetime.
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Google is currently implementing VP8 encoding for Hangouts to upgrade their video chat to HD. It will allow Hangouts to handle up to 10 way video calls in HD.
Ah, I see. I thought I remembered seeing an article about this. Thanks for the confirmation.