Mobile Skype
My mate just got his hands on one of these. Basically this thing looks and feels like a mobile phone but runs Skype software. You can make and receive Skype calls just like you can on your PC. The phone connects to WIFI connections, so anywhere with WIFI you have your free skype calls.
This got me thinking as I had skype on my mobile but had never used it due to the high gprs / 3g costs. But had never considered using it in anger with WIFI so thought I would give it a go.
I had just put a new version of ROM onto my phone to get AKU 3.2 and this ROM had pre-installed Skype. I have a skype account hooked up to my home phone so created a new Skype profile for my mobile. The application works pretty much as it did on the PC. The only problem I has was as it was an application the sound by default works through the phone speaker as opposed to the ear piece which I found to be very quiet and hard to hear. After a bit of searching on the net I found this which allows you to divert sound through the headset.
start a registry editor on the phone and go to hklm\software\oem\voicecommand and set the value of "launchapenable" from 1 to 0
when activating voicedial from your headset (press connect button at the headset 2 sec.) it diverts all audio to the bluetooth headset. Pressing the button again disconnects the bluetooth and the main speakers are active again.
The dedicated device is a neat solution that seems to work really well and claims up to 50 hours of standby time... .for my phone to work I have to have wifi on and bluetooth.. I will probably get a standby time of about 5 hours.. now we just need a device that does both skype and mobile well... with more and more places getting wifi connections can truly have a single contact number that can follow you around and have free calls :)