September 11, 2010
FaceTime comes to iPod touch. Video calling is in full effect on iPod touch. Now your friends can see what you’re up to, when you’re up to it. With the tap of a button, you can wave "hi" while standing in a foreign country, get a second opinion on a pair of boots, or have your friends bear witness to the everyday pranks, bets, and dares they otherwise might have missed — new iPod touch to new iPod touch or iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi. And come face to face with even more fun.
The new iPod touch is awfully close in functionality to the iPhone 4, with the most obvious exception being no 3G cellular phone capability. However, provided you have WiFi, there are obvious ways around that. This means you can conduct FaceTime video calls with other iPod touch or iPhone users, of course, but also, with a few apps, make superior quality voice calls as well.
When FaceTime was introduced on the iPhone 4 earlier this year, Apple chose to integrate it with the built-in Phone app, a logical choice considering how the company wants to present it as just another type of phone call. Apple also used users’ actual cellular phone numbers from the iPhone 4 to register devices with its FaceTime servers and allow users to place calls to each other.
VoIP expert, Andy Abramson, explains how he did this:
After a few minutes of syncing the new iPod touch to my Mac Book Pro I went through the steps of configuring a few Voice applications.
* Skype
* Truphone
* CounterPath’s Bria
* Gizmo5 for iPhone
After making calls over WiFi using my new FreeTalk Everyman Handsfree headset that’s designed for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, I quickly realized that the sound quality was as good *OR BETTER* than on my iPhone.
Next I fired up the Verizon Wireless MiFi and made a few more test calls to friends whom I regularly speak with over my Verizon Droid. The result was even more revealing. People on the other end said I sounded better.
With an unlimited plan from Truphone for $12.95, free calling over Google Voice via the Gizmo client and my Skype Unlimited World Plan at about $12.00 a month, all that calling and data still ends up costing less than an iPhone with a calling bundle and a data plan on AT&T.
With a little ingenuity you can be calling over something other than a landline, or mobile phone, with quality as good, or better, all while saving money, having more control and greater flexibility.
iPod touch users will also apparently need an Apple ID to actually register their e-mail addresses with the FaceTime network, but it’s not clear whether this will happen transparently as it does on the iPhone or whether the user will need to complete some type of sign-in process.
Related Article: 10 Tips for the New iPod nano
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