Comments on: VoIP Coming to the Palm OS

As I said ages ago, Palm should've released a T|C2 with a replacable battery, wi-fi/Bluetooth and pushed as a "do it yourself VOIP" alternative to contract/carrier/cellular-based Treos. That way Palm could profit no matter which route a user chose to go. That kind of renegade, outside the box thinking could really have turned some heads in Palm's favor. Instead they've chosen to just die a slow death by trickling out ho-hum retreads.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX

...decided to leave microphones out of their most popular new PDAs.

I could have said that, but Skype actually works quite well over EVDO on the Treo 700w, so this app may actually work on the 700p (which I sincerely hope does have a microphone ;) )

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...

However, I'm not in a rush at the moment. I have beta tested mobiVoIP and it isn't ready for prime time quite yet. I think it will be great when it has all the bugs worked out, but the "choppiness" (packet separation?) and delay make is impossible to use at this point. YMMV.

And legodude, what's that about Dmitry and the mic mod? Can you explain further about what rights he owns? His solution might be the "correct" way (soldering to the circuit board), but the easy way for an internal mod is to solder to the pins at the connector. He wouldn't claim the "rights" to that, would he?

It might not be the "mythical color HandEra", but I'm liking my TX anyway.

Palm needs to be friends with the carriers. Carriers fear VOIP. Ergo, no VOIP by Palm.

The latent VOIP capabilities of the T|C (heavily marketed at launch) actually gave Palm leverage with carriers to achieve what Palm actually wanted: smartphone dominance. :)

------
"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."

http://mobivoip.net/screenshots.mht

-Ryan

No, Palm's slowly starting to lose their grip on Bluetooth. Despite being an early advocate, Palm's DONE nothing but cripple their BT implementations over the past 3.5 years...and now they are lagging all of the competition in supported profiles.

Did anyone ever confirm if the 700w is truly BT 1.2 capable or not?

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX

I'm pretty sure that the 700w is indeed Bluetooth 1.2.

It's a shame that Palm has become so beholden to the telcos. Double shame that the telcos are so afraid of VoIP. It's obviously the way of the future (even if I think reliability problems will hinder it for awhile), so why are they trying so hard to crush it?

The telcos need to reinvent themselves as wireless ISPs, IMO. Voice is only going to get cheaper and easier. Data is where it's at. As such, at least in Australia, they're going to have to rethink the ridiculously expensive mobile data plans they have now and go for something more affordable. Once they hit the right price point, the people will come.

Until then? People will ignore the benefits of 3G - 'cause it's far too expensive right now to enjoy them.

This sig is a placeholder till I come up with something good

It's cheap. Everythings cheaper when you run it over IP, because you no longer need as much specialized hardware. Instead of seperate hardware systems for voice, mobile voice, data, TV, whatever, all you really need is an internet connection, and everything else can be done in software.

The catch is that that cheapness bites into the carriers. They can currently charge unreasonable sums of money for service because the cost of entry is so high that it prohibits competition. If everything is running over IP, though, then anybody with the right software can compete.

The obvious end result is the carrier as a service-agnostic internet connection, but they don't like that idea. They want to keep their established business model, because it's more profitable for them.