VoIP on mobile phone is booming right now. There are so many applications that enable VoIP on our S60 phones. There are so many companies jumping into this business.

As an S60 user, we may ask, which VoIP application to use. I have tried several VoIP applications for S60. Unfortunately none of the really satisfy me. The problems are mostly usability or quality. Hope that this situation is getting better in the near future.

In the next two postings, I would like to share my opinion about several VoIP applications for S60, i.e.:

  • barablu
  • EQO
  • fring
  • Gizmo
  • iSkoot
  • Truphone

There are some more VoIP applications for S60, SoonR; but I won?t cover them.

There are basically several technologies for mobile VoIP, i.e.:

  • VoIP over cellular. This technology utilizes standard cellular network, such as GSM or CDMA, to make VoIP call. The idea comes from the fact that many mobile phones do not have enough processing power. Besides that, not so many phones have WiFi yet. EQO, iSkoot and SoonR are examples of application that use VoIP over cellular.
  • SIP. SIP is the most popular standard for VoIP. There are a couple of S60 devices that support SIP, for example Nokia E61 and Nokia N80. We can expect more and more S60 phones will come with SIP support. Gizmo, fring and Truphone are examples of client applications that use SIP.
  • Proprietary protocol. Skype is probably the most popular technology in this area. Although there have been rumors saying that Skype is coming to S60, it is still not available yet. However, there are already some applications that support Skype-like technology, for example barablu. fring can even make a call using Skype network.

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