Giant Leap for Mobility

I consider myself to be very fortunate living through these days of technology redefinition. I finally found a software that I was desperately waiting for. Skype now runs on my Nokia E61.

The E61 has a built in VoIP client. It has WiFi connectivity. Then why is it that Skype was not made available for the Symbian platform?

Some reports I read indicated that it was due to the processor speeds in Nokia phones - the processor could not handle the encoding required for Skype. One workaround devised was the iSkoot. The iSkoot client loads your contacts list from your PC, and when you select a contact to call, it calls an iSkoot service to connect with the contact. A very nice workaround - but it uses SkypeOut credits. So you pay for the international call and use Skype credits.

FringLand Ltd. recently launched fring that does away with this shortcoming and went ahead. fring allows users to make calls to Skype and Google Talk contacts directly through WiFi. fring has its own network that they have bridged to the Skype and Google Talk networks. Which basically means, free calls to your Skype contacts.

Though their beta has some stability issues, I'm way too happy to complain. Remember, this works best with WiFi enabled phones. The lag in GPRS connections could be as high as 1 second - not a very good calling experience. I hope they keep this service free just like Skype does.

Another reason for you to get a Nokia E61 :)

[Update: Changed the description of iSkoot in accordance with Doni's comment below. Apologies for misinterpreting how iSkoot works. I think there is a software that works in the way I had described earlier (briding 2 Skype calls). I don't remember now what the name is.]