While people moan about how difficult it is to get VoIP apps onto the iPhone because it might hurt precious telcos’ revenue stream, when it comes to using the wonder phone for video calling there’s a much more serious problem.
Firstly, you can forget about using your iPhone or iPhone 3G because, for whatever reason, the camera just can’t do video.
Let’s face it, it can barely do photos.
Even if you’ve got the iPhone 3GS, you’re still stuffed, because the camera is in the wrong place. It’s on the back.
As if the Apple faithful hasn’t put up with enough from Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile lovers, we’re now forced to look on and drool at those with handsets that are actually built to allow two-way video communication.
(Forget the fact that not many people really care about video chat, except those who are trying to sell themselves — when did you ever see anyone except Steve Jobs using or even demonstrating OS X’s iChat video conferencing?)
Yes, fring announced today that they’ve upped the game with a new version of the software that allows video calling over Wi-Fi (not 3G, of course, partly because 3G coverage and speed is generally so poor).
The company obviously thought iPhone users wouldn’t want to suffer the indignity of using a handheld mirror in order to initiate a two-way video chat. Perhaps the idea of your friends and family seeing you in mirror mode would freak them out. It would certainly look weird when you’re sat on a crowded train trying to conduct a two-handed video chat.
I’m sure the concept of using a mirror with the iPhone for this reason was already discussed early on in the handset’s life, which begs the question as to why Apple hasn’t yet built in two cameras — one on the same side as the screen for conferencing use and the other for shooting video and photos.
We might even get a decent primary camera out of Apple.
