Mike Wilks' Blog

A decent Skype application on the iPhone would be the killer App, bar none. Whilst there is still no official Skype client for the iPhone there are a number of third party applications which have various levels of Skype functionality.
All of the clients out there have two very annoying restrictions which, for me, reduce the proposition of Skype on the iPhone. What’s worse there is nothing even an official iPhone App from Skype can do about them.

1. None of the applications will allow you to make Skype calls over anything other than Wifi. I wonder how much influence the network carriers have had over this apparent Apple imposed restriction.
2. Apps cannot run in the background on the iPhone so even if you are at home or in another place where you have constant wifi you will still miss inbound calls unless you have one of the Apps open at all time. To be honest though if you are at home you may as well have Skype open on your Mac or PC.

The iPhone Skype capable applications I can find include:

• Fring
• IM+ for Skype
• Nimbuzz
• TruPhone

Functionally their coverage is not the same, the table below shows the major differences. IM+ for Skype is not compared here because it works in a different way, described below.

[TABLE=4]

IM+ for Skype is different because it uses a callback model where you enter your mobile number and Skype calls you (at a cost) even for outbound calls. This is the same model as the Skype Mobile Lite products and makes little sense to me. The only use I can see for it is for making international calls where the cost of the Skype mobile call is less than the cost of the international call you want to make. If you are on a subscription then the Skype To Go functionality seems like an easier and cheaper alternative.

Of these clients Truphone seems to have the best call quality, with Fring being very laggy and Nimbuzz being somewhere in between. Right now there is no perfect Skype client for the iPhone, sad but true. I don’t have great hopes for the much hyped (and little officially confirmed) Skype client because of the inherent iPhone restrictions and the fact that their other mobile clients are so restricted.

If you jailbreak your iPhone then things get a little better. There is an application to work around the wifi only restriction as well as one to let you run apps in the background. My iPhone isn’t jailbroken so I am stuck with these restrictions, rumour has it they kill your battery anyway.

I spend a fair amount of time using both my MacBook and iPhone on public wifi networks and this has always nagged at me. I’ve looked at various VPN providers before but never signed up for one. I came across Witopia today while doing something completely different (playing with with Boxee). For $40 with a free PPTP  VPN (for use on my iPhone) too I thought I’d give it a go. Installation was dead simple as they email you a personalised install package (presumably with the certificates contained), a quick reboot and it was done. Configuring the iPhone was a little more manual but not especially onerous, I just don’t like how the VPN dropped out when the iPhone turns of Wifi to save power when the screen goes off!

Witopia also has the advantage of having a US IP address – which is apparently which it is so popular in the Boxee community … can we say Hulu? I suspect they would also be popular if they had UK IPs as well because of BBC iPlayer for people outside of the UK. I suspect there is an entire cottage industry of providers supplying IPs from different countries which has never really occurred to me previously.

Anyway I haven’t had much time to play with it yet but I’ll probably blog about it when I do.