Palringo is a very cool Instant Messaging program with push-to-talk VoIP functionality that runs on Windows Mobile phones, Symbian phones, and PCs. Palringo allows you to instantly exchange text, photos and vocal IMs with an individual contact or even a group.The multiple platform support enables you to stay in touch with your contacts whether you are working at your PC or on the go with your mobile phone. Further, Palringo also lets you send photos, vocal messages and exchange text IMs with other IM systems such as AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, and more. Thus, its excellent IM interoperability ensures you can at least IM other popular IM programs.
The coolest feature in my humble opinion is the push-to-talk (PTT) feature, which lets you instantly VoIP your buddies like a walkie-talkie or a Nextel phone. You can also PTT a group as well, which I can see being very addictive for teenagers -- but also a useful feature for mobile sales teams. It doesn't use SIP and it leverages the open source Speex codec. They're currently working on a Java version, which will add even more supported devices.
It doesn't offer outbound or inbound PSTN connectivity - it's strictly an IM and PTT application, but hey, who's complaining? It's free after all.
Go download your copy and check it out!p.s. Here's some Symbian screenshots
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take that iPhone!
Excellent points are given by this blog. Thanks!
Sounds like a nice application. Shame it does not support the SIP protocol which is used more and more often in mobile telephony (Nokia E65 & Nokia N95 for instance).
Those phones, when in a WiFi area, can switch from the regular GSM network to the WiFi and SIP protocol to make phone calls. That implies not going through your mobile phone provider anymore but through a SIP provider which has has much lower rates since they do not have to maintain an expensive GSM infrastructure. Those services come with an inbound number and/or outbound calls, which can be redicted on a softphone when the mobile phone is not available or switched off.