VOIP Fring and SIP on the N95

I tested three 'applications': Fring, TruPhone and Gizmo. Actually I would not call the software from TruPhone and Gizmo applications but installation wizards for their service using the inbuilt SIP.

Fring, I installed it and did some tests. First I tested the Fring TestCall in an rural area over GPRS. Voice quality was acceptable, the testmessage and the playback of my own recording was understandable. However is was difficult if not impossible to identify the caller by the sound of his voice and hear any emotions or voice stresses. Text chatting seems fine. Amazingly T9 works quite well for this. Lovely in the cinema. In urban area, GPRS really has hickups in the sound quality. Using wifi seems just as bad. I could not test UMTS, I am not allowing my provider to attach another 8 months to my overpriced phone contract. I just wait the few months to switch. Besides work and home have excellent wideband wifi connections.

TruPhone and Gizmo were tested on a 'open' network and at home behind the firewall. Gizmo could not cope with the firewall. TruPhone worked flawless behind the firewall. There was nothing much to configure on the provider issued firewall thus... bye Gizmo. The soundquality of both is excellent, of landline quality or better. Ridiculus Orange and Vodaphone exclude SIP support in their simlocked N95's, because 'the sound quality is not garanteed'. Well, SIP over wifi is much better at home than my mobile connection on a rainy day.

Both TruPhone and Gizmo run SIP so they should be able to call each other and other SIP networks as well. This in contradiction to Skype.  And Skype puts a load on your own network for routing other peoples calls. Using UMTS or GPRS would let you pay heavily for running Skype in the background. The sound quality is far better than Fring. However I had not yet the opportunity to contact my Maltese connections ;-) Since Malta as an island has a small connection to the mainland it is sometimes heavily loaded. Making it a great way to stress test the communnication.

TruPhone currently offers free landline calls to over 40 countries until end of June. Gizmo offers free landline calles for over 40 countries for active users. Some countries allow also free mobile calls. Gizmo gives you 25 US dollarcent free, TruPhone 2 dollar. Dial-out from SIP is very reasonable comparable with Skype out, some individual difference still exist.

SIP is the new Skype as far as I am concerned. Stil I am wondering wether videocalls can be made using SIP on the N95 and wether or not it would work proper. Anyone?