The long awaited upgrade has finally arrived. Nokia just announced the new Internet Tablet 2007 update v4.2007.26-8. Nokia N800 owners can now enjoy three new much anticipated features: Skype client support, Adobe Flash 9 browser plug-in, and 8GB SD memory card support. Battery life has also been improved on this update, as well as a better touchscreen sensitivity. Nokia however decided to end the beta version of the Call Invitation app by August of this year.
Archive for the 'voip' Category
For me, the promised addition of Skype to the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet has meant the ability to connect to millions of Skype users for free voip calls — a network far larger than Gizmo and Google Talk offer — and, of course, video internet calls.
Maybe I’ve been missing the boat on this.
A forum post here at ITT alerted us to a post at jkontherun with a photo of Skype running on the N800 and a few pieces of information: July. No video yet.
No cam calls? What’s the point? I thought.
And then I wondered why the photo showed a “Buy Skype credit” link in the app. You only use that when you pay for Skype calls, which is only when you’re calling someone who doesn’t have Skype.
Yikes!
Will I be able to call anyone on any landline or cellphone whatsoever from my Internet Tablet? Looks like it to me.
That, I think, is maybe going to ease my unhappiness at having to wait for Skype cam calls. More than a lot, I should say.
(photo from jkontherun)
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Update: Two days a week I work from home, and I tie up the house phone for an hour at a time with weekly conference calls.
The cellphone reception right where we are (at the bottom of a hill) is poor, else I’d consider our cellphones as alternate home phones.
In the past, we’ve had two lines, but we never knew when we needed the second line and the expense has never seemed justified. But what a pain it is sometimes having just one phone line.
My “use Skype for a second line” and “well, use Gizmo then” efforts were abysmal failures. Maybe it was my cheap headset. But things didn’t work out. And I sure didn’t like being tethered to the upstairs computer anytime I wanted to make a call.
I realize now that my N800 and 770 aren’t two new phones. They’re two new phone lines. (Hey, with two children entering precocious years, I might need more than two additional lines.) Low rates, too — $30/year for unlimited calling to regular phones on Skype (eg, $2.50/month) and just 1.9 cents per minute at Gizmo with no minimum monthly.
Could be a very easy way to enable each of us to be able to talk (and wander around the house!) at the same time.
AT&T announced today that it was beginning “Video Share” services in Atlanta, Dallas and San Antonio, with additional markets to come in July and eventually rolling out to 50 cities.
Video Share permits the owner of a 3G phone to transmit live video images to another owner of an AT&T 3G phone in one of the supported markets. The price is 35 cents a minute, with $5/mo (for 25 minutes) and $10/mo (for 60 minutes) plans. The Video Share feature is extra and not part of any AT&T data plan. Only one phone can transmit at a time, but the direction of the video stream can be switched during the call.
The size of the video looks to be something around 176 x 150 (or less) pixels*.
Within the 50 cities that will get Video Share, of course you’ll have to stay within the 3G coverage area.
Let’s compare that to the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, now and, well, let’s say July.
Right now you can have two-way visual calls — each side transmitting live — with any other N800 owner. The images are webcam quality, at 176 x 144 pixels. If the soon-to-arrive Skype voip package contains video as anticipated, cam calls can be made with any of the newer UMPCs — that is, someone who can walk around with the same untethered approach of the N800 or a cellphone — and with the millions of computer-based Skype users with webcams, PC, Mac and Linux. Um, you’ll need to be within range of a wifi network or else make the call on a cellphone data plan.
These cam calls are free.
OK, let’s recap.
AT&T: Pay $10 every month at a rate of $10 an hour, for one-way video, and only to other AT&T customers with 3G phones. Because it’s a cellphone, you can walk around while you talk or pan the camera. You’ll have to stay within the 3G coverage area.
N800 Internet Tablet: Free, unlimited, two-way calls, to anyone with webcam and voip. (You have to use Skype, but you don’t pay anything to use Skype for these calls.) You and any other webcammed-tablet user will be able to walk around while you talk or pan the cam. And you will need to be within range of your wireless network or with a cellphone connecting to the internet, using your data plan from your own preferred telecom.
Gee, maybe if the iPhone were being offered with this fabulous deal I’d spend more time thinking about AT&T’s offer. But, gosh, why would I want to pay, and pay, and pay for something I shouldn’t have to pay for? (The day I do that, Apple’s coolness factor will definitely have rubbed off onto AT&T. Not yet, baby, not yet.)
* As I understand it, the phones use a webcam-type second camera for this video and not the photo camera the phones might have.
Look, to start with, the term used for the killer app for the Nokia Internet Tablet is not going to be “video calling.”
“Video calling” is so last century.
What we’ll call it when we can see the person we’re messaging is anybody’s guess. Maybe “cam calls.” Or VidIP (video over IP). Or VM (visual messaging).
“Video calling” is what the telecoms will charge hundreds of dollars for. It’s not what NIT users will be doing.
With a large universe of Skype users, NITs make dandy phones. But you know what? I’ve got phones up the, um, wazoo.
I haven’t had a tremendous experience with Nokia’s very-beta internet calling, but what I’ve had makes me think that webcam plus VoIP is less like a phone call and more like IMing without typing.
When my kids tried out the N800 look-at-me calling, they didn’t act like it was a phone. They stayed connected for forty minutes or longer and treated the NITs like video walkie-talkies, roaming around the yard (and neighbors’ yards) and even playing “you can see what I’m looking at” hide-and-seek.
I tried but wasn’t able to connect when an N800 was temporarily at grandma’s. Connecting to her, I expect, would have been more like a phone call with faces.
But I think the IM generation will make this walkaround webcam into just a really practical — no texting charges! no keying! — form of visual messaging, with bursts of messaging interspersed with periods of being connected but not communicating.
Thoughtfix advised me this week that webcams are becoming standard issue in the second-generation UMPC tablets, which means Skype cam calling will work between the Windows and Linux tablet communities.
And you put mobility + visuals + internet-pricing together and you have a killer app for the, um, VM generation.
