Skype on iPhone?

In December 2003 I bought a SonyEricsson P900 smartphone. I loved it. FANTASTIC apparatus! But, the battery was dead (since almost a year I was charging it almost continuously on my laptop USB port!), most of the keys didn’t work (but i had the touchpad), it was full of scratches, etc. Therefore I replaced my SonyEricsson by an iPhone. Why? The HYPE, and my former love of APPLE … yes certainly. It isn’t a shame to admit this.

After some weeks playing with my iPhone, I have to say I am not impressed at all! I compared my SonyEricsson with the iPhone, and of course a word on Skype!

The good things:

• Fantastic photo rotating and zooming function.
• Yeah! WIFI! Fantastic too!
• OK: great applications (but I had also great applications with my SonyEriccson).
• Bookreading: quite some interesting free books.
• Much more games and applications although I don’t use them often.

The things I used a lot on my SonyEriccson and aren’t on my iPhone:

• Voice commands: I could do voice “recognition” calling with my SonyEriccson (Saying “Claudio” and my “SonyEriccson” called my son Claudio)
• Copy – Paste (it seems it will be in the 3.0 iPhone version)
• Handwriting: I could write on my screen to add or change data in my calendar or any other application.
• Videocamera! Ooh, what an iPhone disappointment (I knew it in advance), although … when you jailbreak it you can have it!!!!!!
• I could use my SonyEriccson as a memory stick! NOT possible with the iPhone!!!!
• I could synchronize it without using a cable for instance with an infrared connection!

And the things I am disappointed from and that aren’t related to my former SonyEricsson:

• I hate the omnipresence of iTunes on my PC. iTunes is all about selling music and applications, it isn’t very user friendly either. I use AIMP2 for music, an amazing piece of Russian software with lots of extras!
• Loading videos: only MPEG, and most of the time it doesn’t work even for original MPEG videos.

Skype?
Well, no native Skype on the iPhone (not on the SonyEriccson either) but yes, a very good replacement for it : FRING, only through WIFI (for the time being). But great! Fring also shows me, besides all my Skype contacts, my (very few ) MSN contacts (two of my 3 kids and some other few persons)! I can call, I can “SkypeOut” and I can chat when on WIFI. Lovely, thanks Fring! AND IT IS FREE!
But ... other dissapointment: if i want to launch another application while "fringing", Fring stops: no multitasking of iPhone applications!

To be honest, if they steal my iPhone I will scream, but only for the money. And probably I will do a more technical market comparison before deciding what will be my next mobile phone, instead of following the HYPE.