iPhone only: Previously mentioned mobile VoIP and chat application Fring has updated their iPhone app with support for streaming video calls. It’s a great feature, but it does have a catch.
If you’re unfamiliar with Fring, it’s a messaging application that integrates with everything from Skype and Google Talk to Facebook and AIM. For most, the VoIP feature comes via Skype. With the new update, iPhone and iPod touch users with a Wi-Fi connection can make and receive video calls via Fring or Skype and watch your contact from your phone. Unfortunately the video chat is only a one-way video thing for now, meaning either you can watch your friend talk or your friend can watch you talk. This is, of course, a limitation of the iPhone and its non-front-facing camera. The folks at Fring assure us that two-way video calls will be available as soon as the iPhone gets a front-facing camera.
Two-way video or not, it’s great to see a first step in this direction for the iPhone. Video calling may not be an everyday sort of event (I do plenty of things while I’m on the phone that the person I’m talking to doesn’t need or want to see), but it’s certainly got its place, and it’ll be nice to take video chat out of our computer monitors.
Fring is a free download.
Earlier this year