New Maemo release, now with Skype
July 10, 2007 9:07 am GeneralWhile I was traveling through the beauties of Connemara, Nokia released new firmware for n800. Great, of course (gratitude attached). But why is everybody so excited about skype availability? It seems people forget that it is absolutely proprietary technology – from top to bottom. And the saddest thing that skype.com has already put “VOIP=Skype” cliche in many many minds. Just go to the nearest computer store – you’ll find a lot of headsets with the Skype logo over them – and you’ll hardly find a salesman who knows what SIP is. That is dangerous (it is a very hard case of the vendor lock!), and now, with this release, n800 helps these guys. Would it be better if Nokia supplied decent SIP client working out of the box (gizmoproject helps to some extent but it is not installed by default)?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:40 am
OpenWengo could have been suitable for that.
The rest not, too bad usability, bugs, and lack of video.
July 10th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I agree fully with you. This is reason why I slowly investigate and invest time in understanding and deploying really working SIP and Jabber solutions, like GTalk, Ekiga, etc.
I think problem with Skype that lot of geeks felt nostalgy and helpful hand that finally someone released _working_ VoIP solution for Linux AND Windows at once. Ekiga 3.0 only will reach when it can start to compete with Skype, and Jabber audio and video extentions are not fully standartised yet. So, I think, we have lot of job to do to really steal spotlight from Skype, but we will do it, eventually.
OpenWengo growing popularity also definitely will help, as it is really cool looking app, using SIP.
July 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Nokia does provide a decent SIP client out of the box – for Symbian.
We have Nokia N80 and N95 cellphones that automatically connect to the Asteris PABX at work via Wifi and SIP. This works aboslutely seamlessly and concurrently with regular cellular service. I’d say that we’ve reached a “carrier grade” level of availability, so much so that non-technical users are altogether blase about it.
I think the real question for Nokia should be; “Why is VoIP on Maemo lagging so far behind Symbian?”
July 10th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Peteris, in general you’re right – except for the fact that Linux as platform evidently has very low priority for skype. Judging by results – nearly no resources allocated. I really do pray for Ekiga and OpenWengo folks…
July 10th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Simon, I know about SIP/S60 – but clearly this has nothing to do with Maemo. And I fail to understand why. Ok, let’s put the question your way: “Why SIP/Maemo is so far behind SIP/Symbian?”.