Free Mobile Phone Calls?


My wife lost her phone recently so we have been on a hunt for a new handset. While I saw that phones could do Skype  when I bought my n95, I didn’t think the feature was as widespread or as good value as it really is.

Talking to the phone shop guy we discovered on Three network Skype calls are completely free. Yup, you don’t pay even for the data. How does that work? A voice call over the internet has to be quite a lot of bytes. If they don’t charge for the call, and don’t charge for the bytes, all they are getting is your monthly subscription?

Well, regardless, we will take it!

For those people without smart phones, or with phones where Skype is not available, there is now a Skypephone3 Skypehone screenshots handset available.

When I travel those short “how are you doing?” calls add up to a princely sum. To be able to make them for free will be a big bonus. Add to that the fact that if I am not online she knows not to contact me or the other way round.

One shame is despite the phones and Skype being capable, there doesn’t seem to be a video option. That would be really cool. After a few days away from family it is nice to get to see them as well as speak to them. My daughter is old enough now to be able to tell me in detail how her day went but the pets in particular don’t talk very much, heh.

OK, lack of video I can understand, but for some reason from my n95 I can not initiate text chat. Seems a strange thing to be missing, especially as the screenshots at Skype.com seem to imply you can.

From our small tests the call quality seems just as good as using Skype from your computer but I would love to know your experiences, I worry if it is seems to good to be true then it just might have a sting hiding somewhere!

Posted on March 13, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under IT

Comments

2 Responses to “Free Mobile Phone Calls?”

  1. Mikael Rust on March 17th, 2008 8:32 pm

    Have you tried the PC Sync that comes with it? It is UNBELIEVABLY bad and for me negates the advantage of having Skype integrated with the mobile. I have to carry another PDA to synchronise with Outlook.

  2. Chris Garrett on March 18th, 2008 1:58 pm

    I don’t sync, especially since I moved to Mac (most syncing tools are aimed at PC). I know I should, but there are only my photographs and telephone numbers I need to keep and I have the pics on memory card and backed up using card reader, numbers are in my address book.

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