Not to mention the fact the people in the ad in almost every shot hold the iC**p incorrectly..

Wat?
In the UK, on most networks at least, video calls have been charged at the same prices as normal phone calls for years, and can be used in contracted bundled minutes. My 800 minutes/month of calls is 800 minutes of video calls if I want it, without eating into my data allowance (as FaceTime over 3g via a jailbreak does).

Visual quality is dependant on the camera on the front of the phone, with a decent camera video calling quality is perfectly good.

Also, i'm not really sure what configurability you could want with a video call. You call someone, and you get to see them as well as hear them. It's not hard, and the video calling that's been round for years and years works on any video-calling capable device (which is almost all feature/smartphones), rather than being tied to one product.

From what I heard, Facetime is only on WIFI due to the incredible amounts of bandwidths it uses so that users dont have to end up paying a hefty data bill. In Australia, the average data plan is between 300MB to 1GB per month (thats up and down traffic), and that Facetime uses up to 200MB an hour. Only takes a few talks, few downloads etc and you've blown the limit. Hell, someone racked a $10k data bill before having a cry! It also goes to prove that their technology is still not yet adaptable to the bandwidth (since it requires at least 512kbit or more - which are more than standard 3G/UMTS). From my understanding, Video conferencing protocols should allow for QoS priority queuing and bandwidth throttling and I believe this is not implemented as yet.

http://blogote.com/2010/apple/apple-...r-3g-uses.html

This forum is not Apple Haters - but really alerting to people once you get past their music, glitz and glam, its false advertising, their CEO treating everyone like tards and really you are just buying hype. I still firmly believe their hardware is decent (typing on a year old Macbook now) - so I try to look at it from as neutral of a perspective as I can.

Sooo... has anyone found an Obstetrician that does offer 200MB/hour bandwidth to their clients to chat to their husbands??

jus another marketing stunt from apple spending millions!

but hey if it were nokia promoting this on our device (n900) would we really dissaprove? i think not

Costs same to me as regular calls.

Not familiar enough with iOS 4.0 to comment. But I'll take the ability to call pretty much every 3G phone ever built as opposed to having ability to call only very small fraction of them, over better visuals.


There are no data costs on UMTS calls. They are charged by minute not by data used. Plus 3G is nearly everywhere. I certainly take it any day over patchy WLAN coverage.

Video calls are the most useless telecom innovation since WAP. Don't really care what happens. And no, I don't think UMTS calls has anything to fear from Apple's walled garden that works only with Apple's own phones. GSM standards have become global standards because they work everywhere and on any manufacturer's phones. Maybe if Steve licensed it to other manufacturers...or if pigs flew accross the Atlantic.

Yes we hate apple for being closed and draconic... that is the whole point of maemo and the community.
What do u expect from people who like to a open source?

all i can say is that again, Steve Jobbs is just the biggest marketing mind of modern time.
At first i thought that people where stupid, i mean how could he market a standard feature like video calls and with such limitations(wifi,an iphone4 is needed). But then i realized something, NOBODY has ever played that card!
for the past 3 years all phones had them, we knew it was there but because noone made fun ads about it so we never bothered!
it wasnt a "trend".
now, it is.
i think nokia should try and tap his calls, follow him around and get some of his marketing geniousness.

Good marketing is about convince people they want something they didn't even know they wonted. And Jobs is doing it very well.

But I disagree to other part. People ARE stupid. Every one as a unit is smarter than another. But as group of consumers we are not so far from apes.

I still believe this community is made up of people who at least can see it. Apple can treat iSheeps like that, cool, their own business. But I am getting p** off if I see that Nokia is doing the same to this community without realize who we are. That hurts more IMHO.

And it's not any geniousness. Find some iPod presentation from 2001. Same text, different features, same pattern. What pattern? Basic, simple marketing rules known from years. I don't want to be treated like a fool by Nokia really. At least they can target different platform this way. Open Source Linux guys? Maemo geeks? hands off.

HHAHHHAHHA i laugh when i see old people in the retirement home using FACETIME and pregnant woman using it. Also the soldier in Iraq is wifi-ing facetime with his pregnant wife. I see epic FAILED from this.

You can use it now with 3g but i wouldnt it would be alot of money.