I've been playing around with fring for awhile now. I like fring which I like to call "the Swiss army knife of mobile VoIP and IM", since it works with Skype, SIP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, and AIM. Because it supports SIP, I'm able to configure fring to work on Asterisk-based systems to be able to make and receive phone calls.
Receiving calls to my '149' SIP extension (see screenshot) works great on my Windows Mobile 6.1 Verizon XV6700 (Apache) phone. in fact, VoIP using fring even works over a cellular data connection, unlike the Apple iPhone which blocks VoIP over
cellular and I'm sure you heard about Nokia announcing they will no longer support VoIP. Om Malik wrote about this last week. As a gadget freak, people have been telling me I should dump my Windows Mobile for an iPhone. So let's see here, no VoIP on popular Nokia phones, no VoIP on the popular Apple iPhone (except over Wi-Fi). Further, you can't even run Skype on the iPhone. Tell me again why I should dump my Windows Mobile phone for an iPhone? Ok, I know, I know, it has a cool multi-touch interface and some other great apps. I'm getting an iPhone to test/play around with, but I already know I won't like it's VoIP capabilities.Getting back to fring, my one complaint about it is that it doesn't support DMTF (touchtones) for traversing voicemail, ACDs/IVRs, etc. So it's useless if you want to call your credit card company, bank, etc. I'm shocked they don't support it yet. There are other VoIP apps for Windows Mobile that support DTMF, such as Talkonaut, so I'm not sure why this is such a technical hurdle for fring. It's the one thing that stops me from using fring more regularly. One other minor complaint is that it doesn't have a quick redial button. Other than that, fring works fantastic. I can make Skype VoIP calls, SIP-based calls, and of course the built-in IM support for the top IM providers. Take that iPhone!
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