Skype Officially Available For Android

After a lot of speculation, Arvisp writes "Skype has released an official Android version. It allows calling via 3G and WiFi." One step closer to the carriers being just... carriers.

One step closer?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

One step closer to the carriers being just... carriers.

Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of pay-as-you-go data plans with an android phone.

Just tried it and there's a big gotcha

[Anonymous Coward]

No 3G calling from the US---curse you Verizon!

Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols?

[_merlin]

Because at the core, they're cheapskates. MS Office costs money while OpenOffice doesn't, so it's convenient to find other supporting reasons to hate MS Office. OTOH, they see Skype and think "free calls!" so all is forgiven.

Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols?

[Ihateturtlenecks]

Because MS is a big, evil, multibillion dollar corporation, but Skype is a free and wonderful...and what? It's actually the property of a multibillion dollar corporation? And they just poached an executive from another multibillion dollar corporation in order to find more ways to draw revenue from their service? Damn. Actually, I think it has more to do with the perceived quality of MS's products and services. True or not, they have a reputation.

Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols?

[forkazoo]

Why do the slashdot crowd rally against closed and proprietary data formats like MS Word documents, but not closed and proprietary VoIP protocols?

It's not that we love closed protocols. We don't. We simply hate the phone company more.

Re:At last!

[gl4ss]

proper carriers? never. in usa 3g use is disabled, apparently. outside of usa 3g is a go. blame the carriers if you're in usa - and also skype, since skype could have released it in a totally connection-neutral form. but they didn't.

Re:Am I missing something?

[Jimmy King]

That depends. It says it supports wifi and there are wifi hotspots on practically every corner where I live and many of them are free and of course the wifi in my house is free for me to use. The carriers all (I believe all of them, anyway) require an "unlmited" (with varying defintions of unlimited) data plan with Android phones, so depending on how much data skype actually uses and how much you use for other stuff, it may still be a viable option if you're over on your voice minutes or whatever.

Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols?

[Vintermann]

In this case, the closed and proprietary VoIP protocol enables people to work around price discrimination on closed and proprietary wires.

Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols?

[Duradin]

Skype is a lot like Flash when it comes to slashbots.

Before Apple said "no Flash on our devices" Flash was absolutely worthless and evil.

As soon as Apple said no Flash on their devices Flash was a saint in the process of being martyred by evil tech-heathens.

So in any other context (or previous threads) Skype is the epitome of the corruptness and wastefulness (OMG it uses bandwidth even when you're not talking!!!) of closed source. Now that it is available to the droidbois it is the symbol of freedom, sticking to the (telecom) man.

Re:But how do you quit?

[delinear]

Well, two things - firstly the point of Skype is generally that you're available and logged in. If everyone used it as you're suggesting, you'd never be able to call someone without pre-arranging it. Whether that makes sense in the context of Skype on a mobile, we'll have to wait and see, it's early days. Secondly, most Android apps behave this way, in fact I think I've yet to encounter an in-app "quit" option, unless it's buried in the settings menu, so if this is not customer friendly, it's an accusation against a large number of Android apps rather than foul play on behalf of Skype.

Re:At last!

[AltairDusk]

Maybe some serious infrastructure pounding from things like video calling will inspire customers to get the infrastructure they've been lagging behind on in place faster.

Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols?

[niftydude]

Well I don't know about the rest of the slashdot crowd - but I always choose sip and open voip codecs over skype where possible - and every linux nerd I know with any street cred at all runs an asterisk pbx server in their home - even if they don't actually have anyone to call.

People here like to hang shit on nokia and symbian - but the nokia e-series of mobile phones have had working voip over 3g for a very long time.

Re:So we like open source, but not open protocols?

[shish]

Why do the slashdot crowd

If you're going to generalise all of slashdot as a single entity with a single opinion, why not ask yourself? You are part of it :P

rally against closed and proprietary data formats like MS Word documents, but not closed and proprietary VoIP protocols?

Personally I'm not so much anti-closed as anti-suck. Closedness sucks politically, so I generally prefer open; but in this case all the other VoIP products suck technically and to a much larger degree