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April 15, 2008

Update: Fring’s Jailbroken iPhone App Now Live

Erick Schonfeld

55 comments »

fring-iphone-small.pngAs Mike reported earlier today, Fring is launching a downloadable app for the iPhone that will allow people to make Skype and other VoIP calls over the data connection instead of using up talk minutes. Fring supports Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo and AIM services.

It is now live. (Warning: You will need to Jailbreak your iPhone to make it work). The Fring blog has more details or you can download it at the Fringcubator. With so many minutes on most cell phone plans, most people won’t be using this to make local calls. But it could come in handy for international calls or simply keeping up with IM on the go. The latter is really the killer app.

And here’s a video of how it works:

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 7:41 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Comments

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  1. John C. McClore

    April 15th, 2008 at 7:46 am

    First! Nice!

  2. John C. McClore

    April 15th, 2008 at 7:47 am

    Do you think ATT will be upset about the workaround for their minutes? So this VOIP is used over EDGE? How reliabl is EDGE for this? I heard it’s shit.

  3. Jessica F

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:00 am

    finally!

  4. Chris

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:00 am

    I’ve got Fring for my Moto Q and it really is awesome… just needs more users. Come on people! Sign up!

  5. steve

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:02 am

    Looks pretty sweet. Unfortunately, the download page is down (Service Unavailable). And, this should be hosted by a trusted source for install through AppTapp Installer or Cydia.

  6. Delroy Frazer

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:08 am

    Its sad how in the first place iPhone was wrapped around ATT alone…as though there is not a bigger world out there…hey - we in Jamaica, the Carribean, Central and Latin America got few spending powers too…

    Good thing we know how to crack - so, now I can test your app to know if it rocks! from the vid, it seems to…good work, pals!

  7. ben

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:27 am

    It works great, I was able to:

    Chat on Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN
    Voip Call on MSN
    Skypeout

    The app runs in the background of the iPhone and even if the screen is off, you receive IM or Voip Calls.
    The sound is great by the way. I am very please with Fring.

    It is really the Greatest app for the iPhone so far.

  8. Gregory Yankelovich

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am

    I have been using Scooter, which allow to run Skype on Blackberry, for a while now. Helps a lot with LD charges. AT&T doesn’t seem to mind, or to know.

  9. mike

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:36 am

    Pretty awesome. Hopefully there is a tiny fee to get rid of that ad garbage. I want something so people don’t know that I’m chatting from my mobile.

  10. mike

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:37 am

    Quite impressed by the always on function though, even when the app is closed. I wonder what the timeout is. Hopefuly if we pay the tiny fee, that’ll get bumped up.

    Well done btw, that is exactly the way to do it.

  11. Emmanuel Paris

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:39 am

    I just tried VoIP via GTalk, it works great ! Waou, this is amazing !

    Here is the link that explains how to install Fring on a iPhone :
    http://www.fring.com/iphone/

  12. Jon Todd

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:39 am

    Does anyone know if this will work over edge or 3G when it comes out? This has huge implications for the entire mobile phone industry. I can’t wait till they put a camera on the front of the iphone and we can start video chatting over IP on an Iphone!

  13. Alex

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:45 am

    I assumed it would work on the iPod touch - I was wrong.
    According to comments on the Fring blog, iPod touch is not supported in this release…. not that we’d get much out of it without a mic… but it would be nice to have a good gTalk app….

  14. lajolla5380

    April 15th, 2008 at 8:51 am

    IS ANYONE ELSE’S GMAIL DOWN?

  15. ivan s.

    April 15th, 2008 at 9:17 am

    Is it better than Meebo for IM?

  16. steve

    April 15th, 2008 at 9:21 am

    @alex, funny you should mention the touch. The top story on lifeahcker right now is all about VOIP for the iPod Touch - microphone hack and all. It seems that Fring isn’t the first iPhone voip app.

  17. MT

    April 15th, 2008 at 9:27 am

    Where can I get the T-shirt?

  18. Roy Timor-Rousso

    April 15th, 2008 at 9:35 am

    Hi Guys,

    Thanks for your insights and feedback.

    as you know, today’s version is a ‘pre release’, so we still working hard to improve the app, and for that your feedbacks are very helpful, keep them coming :)

    BTW: MT if you like me t-shirt i will be more than happy to send you one ;-)

    10x

    Roy
    roy@fring.com

  19. rob frost

    April 15th, 2008 at 9:58 am

    Dude! this “Snap” thing that keeps popping up is _BULLSHIT_

    Seriously, the annoyance factor is getting close to the point where I automatically close the page (like Myspace).

    Just some user feedback.

  20. metabaron

    April 15th, 2008 at 10:46 am

    Hum. touchmods.net are the first one who released a VoIP application for iPhone, not Fring …

  21. David L.

    April 15th, 2008 at 10:47 am

    Love the shirt, I want! I have just put 5 iphone users onto fring, they love it! One even has 4 IM svcs running at once. My girlfriend’s daughter is going to get a skype account, she has friends all around the world. Thank you for a great app! I have a ipod touch, any idea how long before it will run VOIP on the touch?

  22. Lee

    April 15th, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Hmm. had it up and running very nicely. Exited. Tried to open app again. Asked me for my log-in info again, and when supplied, promptly quit. have tried restarting iphone with same results. Man, I was getting excited about this too!

  23. Roy Timor-Rousso

    April 15th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    Hi David,

    no problem :)

    email me your address and I will snail mail you the t-shirt

    (feedback on the product with points of ‘good’, and ‘can be better’ will also be appreciated)

    cu

    Roy
    roy@fring.com

  24. FD

    April 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    Sweet! AT&T must be delighted ;)

  25. Fabian Schonholz

    April 15th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    This is super cool.

  26. More Profitable than Justin.tv

    April 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    Looks cool. I’ll check it out :)

  27. Frank Church

    April 15th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    @ rob frost, You can block it quite easily if it really matters to you.

  28. marko bon

    April 15th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    I’m probably one of thousands of iPhone users in NYC who, on a daily basis, want to dash the phone on the hard concrete. Anything to get around the abysmal service would be a blessing.

    Can any of ya’ll speak to the quality of the signal and the amount of dropped calls over Fring/Skype/etc. vs. the out-of-the-box ATT performance?

  29. Yuri Ammosov

    April 15th, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    As long as you need to jailbreak the iPhone, it is not worth a second look. Starting in May, jailbreaking will cut you off all legit third party apps - who needs this?

    disclaimer: this is not an approval of locked phones

  30. Brian

    April 15th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    my feedback:

    looks good so far, with the following exceptions:

    can’t configure my skype account
    I wish I could resume other chats when I get interrupted by another chat more easily.
    I dont like how it picked up all my Windows smartphone outlook contacts, but at least they are sorted last.
    Test for voice call (echo) didn’t work.
    Need to change the default message alert (very loud and shocking noise)
    Could only test yahoo chat.

    Looking forward to the next version to test, but I will try to use it more.

    Would love a shirt!

  31. Sunil Gupta

    April 15th, 2008 at 4:35 pm

    Pretty awesome! But I am concern about providing my yahoo/MSN login credentials to their gateway server. There is no mention anywhere in their website on how these credentials are travel from my iPhone to gateway server or they store my username/password if I login into yahoo using fring.

  32. Seba in NYC

    April 15th, 2008 at 6:26 pm

    i just installed on my iphone and i tried to sign up from the same iphone and was imposible, even from the website, how i can do that???

    or i just installed something what i can’t used???

  33. naOki

    April 15th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    i tried it just few hours ago.
    Its awesome!
    Iphone works in Japan, haha!

  34. dalecain

    May 2nd, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    My 3rd party installer source doesn’t show edit. How else can I install Fring on my iphone?

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