I remember reading in the specs that Skype would be usable via Wi-Fi and 3G. Living in Hawaii, where T-mobile still hasn't deployed 3G access, I was wondering if folks knew if this was an innocent ommission or if it's compiled in such a way as not to run with only EDGE access? I know voice quality might be mediocre, but if I'm trying to conserve minutes, mediocre is better than non-existent.

More broadly, I was wondering if folks knew whether apps could be written to take advantage of whatever connectivity is available, or whether the SDK/hardware limited 3rd-party developers to wifi or a wi-fi 3G combo in some way. I've been trying to read over the Maemo 5 dev guide (here: http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...eveloper_Guide) but honestly, I'm not a developer, and the answer just isn't apparent to me. TIA.

There are no limits placed on the types of connections applications can or cannot use unless placed in the program by the creators. I cannot think of any applications in the history of Maemo that has done so.

Skype has never been limited to certain connections in previous tablets/versions of Skype. While I don't have an N900 in my hands to say otherwise with absolute certainty, I doubt they would start now.

what zerojay said.

In addition, they probably left EDGE off of the listing for skype due to concerns about the user experience. While it is *usable* if you can get a decent connection, the latency is pretty bad compared to 3G and in most places you would be really pushing the upstream bandwidth of the connection with a voice call. I just tested skype on my N800 via AT&T edge (bluetooth tethered to n95-3 with 3g manually disabled) to the "echo" test account. I had solid all-bars connection, and the quality was patchy and it was clear that there was a LOT of latency in the call. A text session would probably be fine, but I can imagine an actual 2-way voice call would be pretty frustrating. As usual, JMHO, YMMV...etc.