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Skype Video Calling for iOS over Wi-Fi and 3G

Does sound big.

I've been seeing 3 commercials a day for T-mobile's 4G whatever-it-is phone that can videochat without WiFi. They specifically poke fun at the iPhone 4 and FaceTime depending on WiFi, so this can't be good for them. :)
 
ten-oak-druid said:
My experience has been that 3G service is slow compared to high speed wifi/ internet. I expect the experience of a video call over 3G would be similar to using a dial up modem.
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FaceTime over 3G (jailbroken) easily works as well as wifi as long as you have good coverage (this is on at&t). That's been my experience at least.

Jelite said:
So this renders facetime useless then?
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Useless? No. It still works. ;)
 
danbirchall said:
I've been seeing 3 commercials a day for T-mobile's 4G whatever-it-is phone that can videochat without WiFi. They specifically poke fun at the iPhone 4 and FaceTime depending on WiFi, so this can't be good for them. :)
Click to expand...

I hear ya. But, when there's 10 people on their network during peak times it should be easy to send video :)
 
I've been waiting for this since I got my iPhone 4 in July :D

Can't wait to test it out. Downloaded it already but it's early in the morning and have no one to test it with.
 
Sweet, I have yet to use Facetime because I only know a few people that have iPhone 4s and it hasn't really come up naturally. Facetime really should have had Skype integration or something.
 
I wish I had an iPhone, because to be honest I have no idea what the difference between Facetime for iPhone and Skype for iPhone.
 
cvaldes said:
What does it matter? The iPad does not have a camera. Audio-only is sufficient. Skype can worry about iPad video conferencing when Apple releases an iPad with a built-in camera.

Until then, it's a wasted engineering effort.

And yeah, I'm an iPad owner, too. I simply don't understand your sense of entitlement.
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i think he means an iPad version of the app, like how twitter and beejive have a different, optimised layout on the iPad instead of just being the iPhone version which is small on screen or looks pants when you choose to do 2x
 
Video calls on the 3GS would be weird without the front-facing camera.

Does anyone know if you can switch cameras like with Facetime for iPhone 4/new iPod Touch?

Edit: just tried it out with my iPhone 4 and iPod Touch and you can switch between cameras, though it takes two taps to Facetime's one. The video quality is also fairly poor, but at least we can have our kids video call Grandma and Grandpa who don't have a Facetime-compatible device!
 
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BoulderBum said:
Video calls on the 3GS would be weird without the front-facing camera.

Does anyone know if you can switch cameras like with Facetime for iPhone 4/new iPod Touch?
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Yes, and you can use the camera on the 3GS to show others stuff e.g.
 
iChat works way better on the desktop for video that Skype. The video quality on Skype is very poor.

However, I don't really get to use FaceTime on my iP4 b/c you need a Mac running Snow 10.6 and none of the people I would video chat with have that yet.

So we just use iChat on an iMac or MacBook to see them.

I plan on getting the iPad 2 to replace the MacBook. Then I could use Skype on that to chat with both Mac and PC Skype users. But unless their video quality improves, I would only do that until the people I know get FaceTime.

cowbellallen said:
I wish I had an iPhone, because to be honest I have no idea what the difference between Facetime for iPhone and Skype for iPhone.
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Truth is I will be excited about using the iPad 2 to video chat, but on the iP4 it isn't that great, the screen really isn't big enough.

If Apple is smart they will include a FaceTime camera and App in the next revision of Apple TV. Give it a mini servo so that you can pan and tilt for best viewing and you have living room webcam. That's how it should be!
 
I'm happy we finally have it but the video quality wasn't that good it wasnt better than FaceTime or the Tango and both of those apps were easier to set up. I can't wait until Apple opens up FaceTime completely so I don't have to use these other apps.
 
The real deal here is that Apple is waiting until iPad 2 comes out so that they have released FaceTime on all of their devices and then they are going to push it as an open format for cross device communication. Even though they have claimed it is open, they have not released the SDK in a big way because they don't want somebody releasing FaceTime for a windows or a google driven tablet before it is on their tablet. Once they get it out on IPad 2, you will see windows FaceTime and even droid-based apps. Videoconferencing that is not universal would be upstaged by something like Skype, but the ease of use and setup for FaceTime will gain wide acceptance if they don't wait too long.
 
roland.g said:
iChat works way better on the desktop for video that Skype. The video quality on Skype is very poor.
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Roland, I think the video quality on Skype depends on the bandwith and hence the internet connection. My wife and me tried iChat numerous times, but at the end we gave up on it and reverted to Skype. Problem was, when I was overseas and trying to call home, iChat wouldn't even allow us, to establish a video call connection.

On Skype, we normally always get a video, even if sometimes the video quality is poor, but at least, better than no video at all. But that varies. Sometimes the quality is really good.

If you have a stable, high speed connection on both ends, then iChat has a fantastic video quality, I agree. :)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Thank you Skype!! The only problem is FaceTime blows it out of the water. Skype video calling has the same quality of my samsung blackjack 3g video calls I had in 2005. Hopefully someday they'll be able to get on the same field and play ball with Apples FaceTime...NOT
 
cvaldes said:
What does it matter? The iPad does not have a camera. Audio-only is sufficient. Skype can worry about iPad video conferencing when Apple releases an iPad with a built-in camera.

Until then, it's a wasted engineering effort.

And yeah, I'm an iPad owner, too. I simply don't understand your sense of entitlement.
Click to expand...

Nothing is wasted on the iPad.

It's just a shame another company hasn't jumped the boat before Skype with a decent IM Client which supports the same functions..
 
With a new iPad less than a month away - most likely facetime ready - and new US carriers - I think we are shortly to see a 3g video facetime announcement.

The question is price.

It can't be free over 3g - the carriers are not going to let that happen.

So how will apple charge?
If only they had some way to link registered email addresses with bank details.....

Oh yeah!
 
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