To be honest, you like your iPhone, or your Blackberry. The functions are great, the call clarity is wonderful, and you love surfing the web, using your apps, and showing it off. But there is just one small problem: your carrier is so swamped with providing for your fellow phone surfers, that you can count on having your call unceremoniously cut off once every several minutes. And cheap international calls are out of the question too. You tell yourself, you can switch carriers and give your iPhone away to your nephew who has been eyeing it for three months now. But you do know you don't have to break your own heart that way, don't you? There isn't much you need to do; the iPhone and Blackberry are perfectly WiFi enabled. Any time that you happen to be a hotspot, which would be at home and at work certainly, you just flick open one of any number of apps, and make that call, local or international. You'll have your cheap international calls and local calls, and sometimes, if you are calling someone who has a service that is compatible with what you're using, Fring, Skype, iCall or any other, your calls will be free no matter where you make them.
Of course, you're saying that this isn't news; it was not allowed on the iPhone a few months ago, but even when it was, the call quality was nothing to go writing an article about. But that was then, and this is now. They've had the time to smooth out the user experience, and you're guaranteed a near-perfect calling experience. In a land where the cell networks somehow find it possible to let you down, as many towers as there are all around you, WiFi works so well, it feels like it's cheating to use it. All you need to do is download the right app, register, buy calling minutes with your credit card and keep going making cheap international calls and local calls. If you have even an average quality WiFi signal, there is no reason you should have dropped calls, static or voice delays. Everyone either knows about Skype or has an account. Downloading the Skype app on the iPhone and getting going is elementary, and it is a wonder everyone isn't doing it yet. Perhaps everyone still has the kind of doubtful call quality on the brain they had when they first experienced Internet calling a couple of years ago.
So how do all the apps stack up? Cheap international calls to Europe on Skype will cost you two cents every minute; on iCall, a recent competitor, they will cost you five cents a minute. The calls are as good as on any landline too. Calls to Canada and Mexico will cost you just one cent a minute on iCall, and two on Skype. If you don't want to be counting pennies, Skype will sell you a service for three dollars a month that will give you unlimited calling all over North America. iCall has a better deal. for $10 a month, you can call anywhere in the world, if you don't mind being interrupted by a few advertisements.
There are exciting things planned on Gizmo5 and Google Voice soon. Gizmo5 gets you free WiFi calls, Google, the new owner of Gizmo5, has its free Google Voice to throw into the mix. Cheap international calls are probably going to make way for free international calls soon. Stay tuned.