Vonage Ousts Skype as Mayor of VOIP Apps for iPhone/Android
By: Hillel Fuld
Yesterday morning as I was writing my post about the new Facebook Android app, I got a DM from a friend on Twitter. He lives in Florida and he wanted to test out the new Vonage app for iPhone/iPod Touch and Android. If you want to get my attention, a new app will always do the job. I quickly went to download the free app from the App Store, and being as I only have an older generation iPod Touch with no mic, I installed it on my iPad. The app is not iPad optimized yet, but the pixelated graphics should have no effect on a VOIP app, so I went ahead and installed it.
Before I talk about my impressions, let me just say that I have Skype installed, but I am not happy with it for two reasons. One, most of my friends are not on Skype when I need to call them. More importantly though, Skype really annoyed me last month when they banned Fring, so any Skype replacement was going to make me happy.
Putting my Skype feelings aside, as soon as I launched Vonage on my iPad, I was blown away. The process of calling someone across the globe took approximately 20 seconds to set up and I had my friend on a phone call with perfect sound quality and not costing me a dime. It was brilliant.
The new Vonage app works with Facebook connect, meaning you can call any of your Facebook friends that have the app on their iPhone or Android device. Now, although Skype as a service has 521 million users and Facebook only has 500 million, according to their latest announcement, let’s be honest. Most people spend a lot more time on Facebook than they do on Skype. I know I am not the average user with my tech savvy friends, but when I log into Skype, I generally have 10-20 contacts online, whereas on Facebook, at any given time, we are talking in the hundreds.
So as soon as I launched the app, what impressed me the most was its simplicity. If you know me, you know I like simple. Basically, the contacts list, which is the default screen is split into two categories; “Friends you can call for free” and “Friends you can IM for free”. Maybe it is just me, but as opposed to other apps I have used that tend to make things complicated, Vonage had the user in mind here when they named these two options. “You want to call? Here is your list. You want to IM? Check out these guys.” I loved it.
Then I made a call. My friend who was thousands of miles away answered within approximately 1.5 seconds and he said it rang twice by him. There is absolutely no delay in making calls or talking, and the quality was literally as good as my home phone. Now, you can only call friends that have the app installed, notice I did not say running, because the app runs in the background and when you get a call, it rings like a regular call, only free.
Along the bottom of the app, there are four tabs; Contacts, Calls, Messages, and My Account. Again people, less is more! The Calls tab gives you a list of all your calls categorized by All, Received, Dialed, and Missed. The list also shows the times of the call, but when I click on one of the calls to see more info, it places a call to that person, not what I would have expected.
The Messages tab shows you all your open IM conversations using the app. The IM, at least in my experience, worked better and with less bugs than the actual Facebook Chat on the Web.
Lastly, the My Account tab enables you to send out invites to your friends and update your Facebook status. It also offers the option to enable or disable 3G calls, a huge feature that was not available on Skype until very recently.
That is the entire interface and you will notice that nothing is missing. The app has everything you would need in a VOIP app, but to the user, the UI is basic and intuitive. That is the way a mobile app should be designed.
To sum up, I will say that out of the 200 or so apps I have on my iPad, there are maybe 20 that I will be using multiple times daily. This is definitely one such app. Facebook’s popularity is only growing and the ability to call all your friends on Facebook is something that should definitely have been integrated into the social network a long time ago.
I for one am looking forward to the iPad app. Putting the painful pixels aside, I am loving this app and I highly recommend it to anyone who has Facebook, an iPhone, or an Android device, A.K.A almost anyone that is reading this post.
Have you tried Vonage for iPhone/Android? Please let me know if you share my enthusiasm. You can let me know in the comments below or on Twitter here.
