We anticipate with some eagerness Nokia’s inclusion of VoIP capabilities in the 770. More than once, users have wanted to know about using Skype on the 770, Skype having by far the largest number of internet telephonists.

If someone knows whether using Skype will be possible come the Q2 upgrade, please let us know.

Until that time and in lieu of waiting, a port of the Skype software to the 770 was also proposed long ago. Of course, wiser, more experienced heads responded that this wasn’t something open-source endeavors could accomplish, since porting their proprietary software would depend on Skype (or its parent, eBay) doing this.

Recently I found myself on the Skype site and learned that Skype has in fact ported the internet telephony software to Ubuntu, Mepis and other Debian Linux distributions (as well as SuSE, Fedora and Mandriva). Debian, eh? I posted a forum request — Port Skype to the Nokia 770! — and learned in return one salient detail: Skype for Linux uses the QT 3.2 (and not the GTK+) toolkit.

Don’t know how much difficulty it would be for such a port, but it seems like a case of two steps forward and one step back. Only thing I can suggest is to visit the Skype forums and post your own requests if you want it too.

If it’s needed, that is. What exactly is being promised as far as VoIP with the upgrade?