I read over at Mobile Crunch this morning that Skype launched for Symbian. This time it’s really running over IP rather than the so-called ‘VoIP’ offering on 3 UK and Verizon from Skype – which consist of a load of free minutes running over the normal (circuit switched) telephony network (clever marketing rather than clever technology).
I’m still persevering with my Nokia N97 – mainly because it’s so laughably bad, but partly because I love the hardware/keyboard. I never use the Ovi store because it sucks – despite being a heavy mobile data experimenter. But Orca Digital is in the VoIP business, so I thought I’d give this a try.
- I fired up Ovi store
- I searched for Skype – amazingly it came up (the search facility doesn’t work well with Ovi), though it was only 3rd on the list
- I clicked install
- It downloaded, then took a while to install (this is usually slow)
- I clicked launch
- “The operation could be completed due to an error”
Oh dear. That’s that then. No pointer as to what went wrong or how to rectify it. Game over.
On an interview over at Mobile Industry Review, Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki said that he can put his N97 “sleepless nights behind him”. Not from where I’m sitting. My N97 is shocking. I get ‘memory full’ errors the whole time (even though I have oodles of free memory), it crashes, it hangs…
Also, in amongst the ever increasing number of new Android phones being announced, lots are emerging with front facing video cameras – only useful for video calling – which is exciting. Some are announcing proprietary video calling platforms (of little use, requiring users to be on the same platform) – but standards are bound to emerge.