Facetime

Von Luck · 7 Oct 2010 at 22:31

As an Apple hater of long standing, it pains me somewhat to admit that I've purchased an iphone and that Facetime is awesome.

A friend who now lives in New Zealand dropped me his new iphone mobile number, so I add him to contacts then prod the facetime button - a couple of seconds later I'm having a lag free, good quality video chat with someone the other side of the world and it's not costing either of us a penny. Witchcraft.

I wonder if the telecos realise the huge impact this could have on their future business models. Sure you can do the same with Skype, but this is even more seamless and if it spreads to other devices could start hitting mobile companies margins.

icedbullet · 7 Oct 2010 at 22:35

Yeah facetime is pretty amazing. Loosing it is the only real regret I had about sending my iPhone back

Kainz · 7 Oct 2010 at 22:42

I've used it just the once, thought it was brilliant compared to traditional (ie pants) videocalling. Speech was remarkably clear, as was video.

Logsi · 7 Oct 2010 at 23:05

Only time I've ever used FaceTime was when i was out in town and my old man rang me with it. I miss having a jailbroken iPhone

Yas786 · 8 Oct 2010 at 01:12

Logsi said:
Only time I've ever used FaceTime was when i was out in town and my old man rang me with it. I miss having a jailbroken iPhone

Ermmm unless im missing something the iphone doesnt need to be jailbroken in order to get facetime...its part and parcel of the iphone4 system.

OP are you sure that the facetime call was free for you and him??...reason i ask is because my sis in law in Canada reckons its not even though ive said to her that it is as long as shes connected to a WIFI network.

kapows · 8 Oct 2010 at 01:22

free over wifi
it will however use ur broadbband allowance monthly whoever provides bb at your homes

Mattus · 8 Oct 2010 at 01:32

Spawn said:
OP are you sure that the facetime call was free for you and him??...reason i ask is because my sis in law in Canada reckons its not even though ive said to her that it is as long as shes connected to a WIFI network.

It will certainly be free over Wi-Fi - it's just data which goes over the internet. If you could persuade it to work over 3G (i.e. by jailbreaking), it should still be free as long as the data usage is covered by your allowance.

MikeHunt79 · 8 Oct 2010 at 01:35

Spawn said:
Ermmm unless im missing something the iphone doesnt need to be jailbroken in order to get facetime...its part and parcel of the iphone4 system.

I may be wrong but facetime only works over wifi with a normal iphone while a JB'ed iphone will also do facetime over 3g.

Robbo · 8 Oct 2010 at 01:48

I've only used it when I had two iPhone 4's, its neat though and will certainly develop well in the future.

utajoker · 8 Oct 2010 at 09:02

have never used nor needed it.

Tilluss · 8 Oct 2010 at 10:06

I've used it once and it was really good, but the problem is the lack of people with the ability right now. As soon as it gets more wide-spread it'll begin to become more prominent in the marketplace.

I just hope they come out with the windows/mac clients too.

Von Luck · 8 Oct 2010 at 10:53

Spawn said:
OP are you sure that the facetime call was free for you and him??...reason i ask is because my sis in law in Canada reckons its not even though ive said to her that it is as long as shes connected to a WIFI network.

Definitely free as long as you initiate it as a Facetime call (rather than start a standard voice call and then cut over to Facetime).

Yas786 · 8 Oct 2010 at 10:57

MikeHunt79 said:
I may be wrong but facetime only works over wifi with a normal iphone while a JB'ed iphone will also do facetime over 3g.

Ahhh ok got ya...didnt realise that by jb'ing the phone you could facetime over 3G.

Von Luck said:
Definitely free as long as you initiate it as a Facetime call (rather than start a standard voice call and then cut over to Facetime).

Cheers, ill pass the message onto her although i was adamant it was free.

ScarySquirrel · 8 Oct 2010 at 11:01

I recently got an iPhone 4 and I am VERY excited about my girlfriend getting one in November

I tried FaceTime for the first time yesterday with someone at work over the company Wi-Fi. It took about 2 minutes to connect and the quality was pretty poor. I think it might be our Wi-Fi here as it's a bit crap. Does the quality improve with a better connection?

Von Luck · 8 Oct 2010 at 11:15

Quality seemed good to me - good image quality and hardly any latency, which is amazing considering it was a UK to NZ link.

ScarySquirrel · 8 Oct 2010 at 11:29

How long should it take to connect once you've accepted a call?

reflux · 8 Oct 2010 at 11:34

I know three other people with iPhone 4s and I've only used it once. Every time I see those ads on TV I get annoyed. It needs to be on other phones, more people need to use it, I need more friends. I think.

MikeHunt79 · 8 Oct 2010 at 15:12

Out of interest, how hard on the battery is facetime? I find when watching vids on my iPod touch that it tends to flatten the battery after around 2 hours...

Von Luck · 8 Oct 2010 at 17:28

Didn't notice the specific impact of facetime on battery life, but my usage yesterday was:

0700 - fully charged (100%)

2 hrs of video watching
Numerous email checks
Some web browsing
4 or 5 app downloads
Quite a lot of general faffing about
10 minutes facetime convo

When I hit the sack at 2300 my battery was showing 49% left. That's with 3G and Wifi on but Bluetooth and auto brightness off (brightness manually set to about 80%).

ScarySquirrel said:
How long should it take to connect once you've accepted a call?

It took 3 or 4 seconds to connect for me.

adambro47 · 9 Oct 2010 at 09:05

ive used this once since launch just to test it, it works well and i had very little lag at all and connected in about 5 seconds. Just wish it was supported somehow on more devices as i only know 2 people with an iphone 4/itouch 4