Fringing phones

I've had a lot of fun but mixed success using the Fring free VoIP service on the iPhone and other handsets this week. Thanks to everyone who emailed in with their Fring experiences. The following few emails illustrate the range of result's early users have encountered:

 

(The good)

 

"I hooked up Fring on my Nokia N95 over my Wi-Fi network using the SIP service and Skype. Must say very impressed - no drop-outs excellent call quality. A mate of mine in Auckland got Fring on his IPhone, and called me last night to test it out, although the call quality at my end was excellent he had stuttering on his end - we were using Fring with the Skype service."

 

"I've been using Fring on my N95 for about 7 months now, brilliant service. Went to the Nokiaworld conference in Amsterdam last December - Womworld paid for 24 hour WiFi access in the hotel - stayed in touch with friends via MSN and Skype/Fring the whole time without forking over a single red cent to Vodafone."

 

"I have been an avid user of Fring for a while. I use it on my Nokia N95. Overall the concept is great. I use it to make free calls on Skype to my Mother in Australia via my home wireless network. The reception is a little inconsistent but this is typical of the net in NZ. Definitely recommend it for ease of use and option of making free calls on cell phone.

 

(The bad)

 

"I have tried running the latest Skype on a virgin i-mate Windows phone and it was unusable. I feel the problem is Windows mobile is not up to the job."

 

As for my own experiences, I've tried three phones with Fring, the iPhone (which all the Fring buzz was about this week), the HTC Titan and the Nokia N95 – which have had Fring for some time.

 

The iPhone: Fring looks best on the iPhone, this is hands-down the best VoIP client I've seen on a mobile yet. Installation was easy (you just enter the web address of the Fring download in the Installer application you can put on an unlocked iPhone and the software is installed over Wi-Fi. The user interface looks very slick – I merged Google Talk, Skype and MSN to get all my contacts showing their status at once.

 

Messaging is the most user-friendly on the iPhone, I could see myself using this a lot. Downside was that calling hasn't worked for me on the iPhone – not sure what the problem is. Even a Fring test call won't work, I'm booted out of Fring and have to restart the application. It may have something to do with my iPhone (which is running the original firmware) or the fact that I'm attempting to connect over Wi-Fi only, rather than mobile data. I'll keep working on this as I really like what I see so far. Still, I'm chewing through the battery power using Fring messaging over Wi-Fi.

 

HTC Titan: A pretty good experience here – everything seems to work at least, through the interface isn't as nice as the iPhone's. Messaging is at least fairly effortless on the Titan's fold-out keyboard. Good integration with the Windows Mobile 5 settings options so I can configure the phone for Wi-Fi or mobile data and easily switch between the two. Call quality is reasonable though not great and the service didn't work with a couple of Skype contacts. Good over Wi-Fi and mobile data. The online status and messaging are very responsive.

 

Nokia N95: A pretty good Fring experience here. The interface looks good on the N95 and over Wi-Fi the messaging was fairly smooth. Call quality was similar to the HTC. Here's a video for you N95 users who want to put Fring on your phone .

 

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the Fring installation process. For the iPhone it was a breeze. For the other handsets, I just punched my phone number into a form on the Fring website and was text messaged a link to download the software. But is Fring worth using? Well, the experience isn't quite there for the average user, partly because the Fring client isn't seamlessly integrated into the phone's operating system. It's still a manual exercise to go into Fring and stay in Fring while you're messaging or calling. You can however make a regular mobile call from within Fring which is handy. I think people who have big buddy lists in Skype or Google Talk should take a look, especially if you have good access to Wi-Fi or are on a healthy mobile data plan.

 

R&D tax credits and wilting ICT exports

 

Anyone putting money into research and development in the tech sector should be up with the play on what you need to do to qualify for the 15 per cent R&D tax credit the Government is now offering to encourage innovation.

 

It's not as straightforward as you may think, as this Computerworld column illustrates .

 

But a bunch of figures out today from Statistics New Zealand reveal just how badly we need these types of initiatives (and a whole lot of other things) to get our stagnating ICT sector moving again.

 

Exports of ICT goods and services decreased 5.3 per cent in the 2007 financial year to $1.5 billion. There was a staggering 42 per cent decline in exports of electronic devices and equipment. Our strong dollar has to have hurt there, but so too I'm sure has the movement offshore of production, the likes of which we saw this week with Fisher & Paykel's announcement of plans to move its white goods manufacturing to Mexico, Thailand and Italy.

 

There was one positive sign in the figures - exports of published software rose 44 per cent to $121 million. That's the sort of growth we need in the area of the ICT sector - in areas like business productivity software, software-as-a-service, the Orions and Jades of this world. Write it here and sell it over there, many times!

 

Check in here next week for a series of posts on how the recent wave of across the board price rises and the general turmoil in the world economy are hurting the humble electronics consumer.