Simon Butcher

Fring!

Posted
Comments 4

Fring!All is well in the world of smart-phones since Fring arrived not too long ago. Despite having a logo that looks like it was designed in a few seconds of fierce MS-Paint wiggling, this application is actually becoming pretty useful to me.

I got suckered into the whole Skype thing a while ago, and it's saved a lot of money talking to family back in Australia; So much, in fact, that I'm soon cancelling my land-line subscription with the evil Coditel because it now serves no purpose.

Many of the friends I've made in Brussels were expats, meaning most of them hang around for a year and disappear not long after. Keeping in touch over Skype has become easier than bothering with IRC or MSN.

What stopped me from using Skype originally was that I refuse to use a headset — I want a phone, a real phone and not one of these junk handsets. I eventually converted my Siemens SL1 into a dual-purpose phone after buying an M34 USB to DECT. Unfortunately Siemens made this more difficult than it really needed to be (a story in itself, if anyone's interested).

Cordless Skype is great in my apartment, and now real products with this functionality are coming on the marketing, including almost interesting Wi-Fi capable devices like the Linksys iPhone.

However, I already have a Wi-Fi capable phone, and it works as a phone beyond my apartment. It's my Nokia E70, my 2006 lust-phone! Being a phone by design, it breathes streaming audio for a living, and it can connect to the Internet though wireless LAN, GPRS, or 3G's UMTS; so why can't it run Skype?

Well, there is still no Skype for the Symbian operating system that runs on the phone, and Skype have either claimed it to be a waste of time, poor quality, or simply delayed.

My fringing phoneEnter, stage left: Fring.

Fring acts as a broker, allowing you to run several related services such as MSN, Google Talk, and of course Skype. Fring connects to its own servers which in turn exchange information on your behalf between these services: Brilliant idea, and the quality normally isn't too bad.

Plus, the client isn't too difficult to use as an IM client, so I've now started to use this when I'm not home.

This weekend I'll be spending a lot of time at the office doing over-time for a big software upgrade, and Fring should turn out to save me from boredom!


Categories Geek Toys, Reviews

Comments

  1. I should post a new blog post about my new phone, which I will soon, as soon as i convert to my new blog, which is almost ready, just IE broken (http://beta.nullis.net/blog/) So I will keep you in suspense till then as to what it is! PS. Happy Birthday!

  2. Ahh found it ! I came here for the fierce MS-Paint fella ! I have a lovely new toy Nokia N95. I tried installing the eqo.com client, however it continually asks me for the internet link :/ So I will give this ago on the N95. The number of 'land lines' in Australia is plummeting too, only 20% of new clients get a land-line ! Personally I want NextG for internet anywhere in OZ on my Nokia N95 and use it as a bluetooth modem my laptop ;)

  3. (Author)

    Let me know how it goes for you. I exclusively using it over WLAN, since data prices here are like in Australia where I may as well made a call to outer-Mongolia instead of using Fring.

  4. (Author)

    Prae, if it's not a Nokia 888, I won't be impressed :( Let me rephrase that: If it's a Nokia 888, I'll be astounded :)

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