Are you prepared to have your mind blown? As expected, Skype for iPhone will appear “sometime Tuesday” and allow you to make VoIP calls to friends and family all over the world, a move that at once blows a great waft of flatulence in the face of the carriers and, in one smooth motion, high fives the international community of Skype users.
It should be available from the App Store for free.
UPDATE – OMG! It’s also coming to the Blackberry in May!
You obviously cannot make a Skype call over 3G or EDGE but you can make VoIP calls over Wi-Fi. The system also meshes with your iPhone contacts and allows you to filter and search based on users who already have Skype accounts and even make SkypeOut calls, again under Wi-Fi.
You can also chat with friends and family using the iPhone’s keyboard and the system brings in avatars from your Skype sessions.
VoIP has long been a bugaboo for the carriers and the addition of Skype essentially blows their arguments a new one. Skype is a formalized, popular app and the outcry if they had “banned” it would have been mighty. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and now we can have our VoIP calls and chatting without fear of harsh and righteous retribution.
Can you hear me now?
no i can’t just download the officially official app
i have uesed BlackBerry for two years , and it’s humanized attracted me so much…
What about the iPod Touch? can you make VoIP calls from that? if so, I wasted money on the iPhone contract…
i believe so. In fzct it uses Wi-fi. IPod touch just happens to use WiFi. so Yes It works also implicitly with Ipodtouch.
I have an ipod touch and use skype via a programme called FRING, but having skype directly will be so much better.
I don’t mind but just so you know…
Oh I guess you have wireless access on all major highways and locations you visit.
Gareth, I guess you could listen only. The iPod touch does not have a mic.
iTouch doesnt have a mic!
You can buy a mic add-on.
Yes u can use it on noth the iphone and teh touch sound on the touch is a little metal like but good enough
Nice. Carriers will have to be more competitive with their prices in order to dissuade the user from choosing a Skype Out call by default.
Yes you can make calls from an ipod touch but you need an external microphone since the ipod touch does not come equipped with one. They sell them all over the net.
hmmmm still cant officially make skype calls over 3g, well im gonna stick with fring
Fring doesn’t allow call outs either with 3G…
Skype on iPhone 2.2 works over 3G with VPN without any jailbreaks :)
How do I unsubscribe from crunch gear? I want tech crunch only
the best solution is to close your eyes whenever a crunchgear link appears.
lol :-)
You can’t see the difference in your RSS reader. They all say ‘Techcrunch’.
I don’t mind but just so you know…
The best solution is to buy a new computer.
I’m really excited! I’m a big Skype user.
Well .. now.. I need to get.. this.. awesome.. now.. RIGHT NOW!
‘I can hear you…but i can’t see you….can you see me??…ok so lets restart’
What took this so long? Apple, I am looking at you :/
Yeah, almost 2 years of the Iphone and now we have Skype.
April fools idiots
I wonder if this will be an “available everywhere” thing, or an “available only in the US so Canada and the rest of the planet can go suck it” thing.
Now all we need is blanket wi-fi coverage in Boston and I’m telling AT&T to hit the frakking road!
Wicked pumped
ajityyy
There is a possible third reason to add to the mix. The iPhone OS can tell you whether you’re connected via Wi-Fi or WWAN but it can’t differentiate between 3G and EDGE.
so cool!
Truphone has offered this for months, but without the IM component. Truphone works great and seems cheaper than Skype when using VoiP.
@Brian: Skype will work anywhere and does not care where you are. Truphone is the same.
Very interesting. Though I have an original iPhone, I’ve never found any “killer app” at the AppStore that I had to have, so I haven’t ever downloaded even a single one. This is different! Since I’m connected to my AirPort Extreme at home, I could use this quite a bit.
Just for this, I will get a iPhone or touch!!! For sure!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Skype’s business model self destructive? The core service is free (Skype to Skype VOIP and IM), it seems their main revenue comes from Skype Out. However, the more successful they become, the less necessary Skype out will become, especially as Skype becomes ubiquitous on mobile phones.
I call more people from Skype-to-phone than Skype-to-Skype. Maybe that’s just me. And even if your contact is mobile but not in a Wi-Fi area, you won’t be able to Skype-to-Skype.
“calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone”
How is this exciting, if you can only use it via wifi?
“You obviously cannot make a Skype call over 3G”
Oops, is that obvious? Are you talking a technical restriction here or a “we don’t want to upset mobile network operators” ?
There is a possible third reason to add to the mix. The iPhone OS can tell you whether you’re connected via Wi-Fi or WWAN but it can’t differentiate between 3G and EDGE.
The user experience of a VoIP app over 3G might be acceptable but over EDGE it wouldn’t be so great. And we all know how tightly Apple controls the user experience.
Also, all that voice-as-data traffic could bring fragile cellular networks to their knees :)
Right so, I use a Palm Treo myself, have for years, and I’ve tweaked it so it can route traffic to my laptop seemlessly behind my provider’s back. I can tell you without a moment’s hesitation, for VoIP Calls there is no technical inadequacy in either an Edge (1x) or “3g” (I hate marketing jargon) EvDO coverage zone.
I wouldn’t suggest trying video calls of Edge networks, but they may work, such as in the case with Crackberries and BES using data-compression.
German Telekom said to business magazine “Wirtschaftswoche” that they will block the app for German Iphones. When will they ever learn???
what exactly are they supposed to ‘learn’? A phone company trying to protect it’s revenue by restricting your access to a program that bypasses the meters and network they put in place?
What is so wrong with phone companies protecting revenue? or trying to make money? Who planted this seed of expectation that everything should be free??
Why not just use a service like Connect Me Anywhere? No app, no wifi/3g/edge, no swanky new phone – they let you make cheap calls from any phone and rates are the same as Skype.
I don’t see what all the hype is about when there’s services like the above that don’t need the customer to have all this new technology. I guess most people just have tunnel vision and don’t see the millions of smaller companies that offer far more than the corporate giants and don’t require you to have new phones or other gadgets
the “no calls on 3G” rule is for 2 reasons – the first is the obvious switch of a call to lower revenue data, and the second is that 3G is a high latency service and not suitable for VOIP
Skype to hold press conference at CTIA Wireless 2009 on Tuesday, March 31 to unveil the company’s latest mobile offerings. Bet this will be part of it.
http://www.ctiawireless.com/media/press_events.cfm
“a great waft of flatulence”
John Biggs, I see a Pulitzer in your future.
It’s clearly a plageristic rip-off of sorts or a tip o’ the hat to Ignatius Reilly.
It’s about time … http://tinyurl.com/dythao
This is a good news for iPhone users who are addicted into using Skype.
“You obviously cannot make a Skype call over 3G or EDGE”
I live in Bogotá, Colombia and use 3G for VoIP almost every day and there are no problems at all. It has to be that the carriers won’t allow it (yet).
I’m actually surprised AT&T would allow this. Of course, free is great for the consumer, but someone has to pay for all those towers.
so touching! feel like running a fundraiser?
For business people, skype on iphone, blackberry, etc, will primarily be used for cheap calling when roaming internationally, or cheap calling internationally when they are home. Because it requires wi-fi, it won’t be a practical alternative to making normal calls for a busy professional. And as Dan D points out, you can get get cheap international rates over your standard cell using a service like connect-me-anywhere or Toktumi. If you add your Toktumi number to your fav 5 or circle etc, then you can make all your calls for free using the standard cell network and not have to worry about wi-fi at all.
Cant wait!
What ever happened to the icall? That program was supposed to let us go from voip calls to cell calls and back.
This is good news for iPhone users, I would like to try it :)
Stoked!!!!!!!!
That’s awesome. It’s interesting to think about how they might disrupt the mobile carrier space a couple years into the future.
Hey idiots this is an April
Fools prank release date
Tomorrow get it?
Uhm, release date some time Tuesday.
Tuesday being March 31st, not April 1st, ergo not April Fool’s day.
Nice joke, TC!
Aww! I was getting all excited about it. Shame on you TC. You know you cannot joke about exciting stuff like that.
works a treat – calls and chat – nice stuff!
I can wait for a hack so it can be used with EDGE and 3G.
Sheesh… now I have to get an iPhone or upgrade my BB since my current BlackBerry is an older model without WiFi :(
have it but it’s crashing… holds for about a min then drops the application….oh but it looks good :-) !!!!!
That’s totally awesome.
If you’re in US and traveling outside a lot;
1- Have Skype Online Number
2- FW your actual number to it.
3- Leave the country
4- Get all your calls and voice mails
5- Pay less
5- Be happy
I downloaded the app from the app store just now and posted some pics !
http://www.fonearena.com/blog/2009/03/31/skype-iphone-app-first-screenshots.html
It’s already available in the Australian App store since the 23rd of March (version 1.0.1). It works great.
For all you Fring lovers, ever tried doing IM to a Skype account? It takes ages for the message to arrive, or it won’t arrive at all.
I love the Skype interface, so much better than Fring’s! Hopefully setting up conf.calls will be supported soon as well!
I think this app will become huge as soon as the 3.0 software comes out!
Here’s the download link for Skype on iPhone when it hits your country http://tinyurl.com/d6j6b7
someone will probably modify skype so it works over 3G.
USELESS,
walk down the street and try to be connected to the same Wifi for more than 200 mts… impossible
VOIP should work over 3G!
if not, what’s the whole point of 3G?
view youtube videos only?
come on!
“You obviously cannot make a Skype call over 3G”
it is not obvious,
hacked FRING on jailbroken allows SKYPE over 3G.
…so long time waiting for nothing!
everything has WiFi,
the psp, DS, ipod …
If I got an unlimited 3G plan is to use it.
bbbbbrrrr I’m so upset with all of you
You should be upset with the mobile operators for not allowing this. There’s nothing the VOIP providers can do!
it is free in the app store.oh it is so good,skype change the im world
Huh? why all the excitement? I had Skype on my old WiMo phone 3 or 4 years ago.