OctroTalk, a mobile IM client supporting video call over EDGE
Today’s mobile IM software, such as fring, nimbuzz, talkonaut and so on, are already as powerful as IM clients on PC, sometime even have more features.
But there is still one feature of mobile IM software is far behind their PC counterparts. That is video chat. There could be 2 reasons that makes video chat more difficult on mobile IM clients than on their PC conterparts: 1. The bandwidth of wireless data connection (except WiFi) is normally smaller than fixed wire internet connections; 2. The CPU on mobile phones has much less computing capacity, which is neccessry for video compression, than the CPU on PC. Though video call is a basic feature of 3G mobile network, it needs support of operators and the price as well as limitation of flexibility make it not so popular among customers.
Fring, Nimbuzz and Talkonaut are very excellent mobile IM software, but they don’t video chat support yet. It is OctroTalk, a mobile IM client not so welknown, that provide video call support.
The UI of OctroTalk looks real unpolished. And it is also not as feature-rich as Fring, Nimbuzz or Talkonaut. In stead of supporting multiple IM networks, it only supports Gtalk from Google or Jabber protocol. It seems that OctroTalk is based on Jabber (the protocol used by Gtalk) with transprorts to MSN, Yahoo and AIM/ICQ. You can also define your own SIP service provider to make call to normal phone number. For the most important feature of OctroTalk, the video call, it works quite well. It can work not only on broadband wireless connection such as WiFi, but also can provide pretty good video quality even on EDGE. Users can customize the video quality setting according to their network environment. The video from other party of the call will take most your phone screen, and your own video will be in a small windows at the corner. OctroTalk also privide desktop program that can have video chat with OctroTalk user on mobile phones.
But unlike Fring, Nimbuzz or Talkonaut, which are freeware at this moment, OctroTalk only can be used for free during one month trial period. After that, users have to pay 30 USD to continue using it. If video call is really something you really want, I think the price is acceptable.
[...] call feature of OctroTalk and TiviPhone makes them outstanding among so many mobile IM software. However, there is another [...]
[...] OctroTalk For S60 Allows Video Calling/IM. This video shows a video call between a PC and a smartphone. [...]
Thanks for the nice post
Pls try to add screen shots too
Since my OctroTalk trial version expired, so I could not have screen shots now. But I posted some videos I found from Youtube in another post.
[...] is not the first mobile VoIP/IM software supporting video calls as OctroTalk has been providing this feature for quite some time, it is even not the first one to provide this [...]