I'm not joking. Which part am I wrong about?

Being around forever? (Here. 1938 first public service. 1992, AT&T sells videophones. Yes with CRT monitors.)

Or nobody wanting it? It's fun to demo, it's fun to do once when away for a while, but actual, real life, every-call-is-video? Phhh.

First of all, bandwidth requirements are way higher to be any good, that translates in higher rates. Second, it requires better coverage, service, bandwidth and response time, encoding video in the stream at least triples the requirements, plus, it's unusable in lower bandwidth scenario, whereas GSM can take a hit and still stand.

I can't find any figures, so I'll fall back on experience. I've asked around, and looked at the company bill. We have about 200 phones. About 150 are capable of video, most can do a video call.

Last month we had zero. I kept asking people who spent a bunch on their phones and plans and that could take the additional cost of video calls and NONE of them ever did a video call just to chat. The few exceptions were testing it, showing off, maybe one to wave to a small child.

In fact, I haven't seen one video call being made, over 3G (we are talking about provider-sponsored calls, not wifi over Google or other free stuff) with the interest of seeing something on the other side. Tests, bragging, demos, yes. Checking up on something, visually, no.

Oh, and, aside from the futility and inconvenience of dressing up for a phone call? Quality stinks. All this marketing nonsense about doctors being able to see a patient in the mountains is bogus. One barely recognizes the patient, let alone diagnose. He'd be way, way better of with a snap at 5 MPx and an email or IM.

Maybe things are different over there, people use it.

I find it unusable. People staring in a 128x128 overly compressed, smudged, moving picture of backlit subject, from a poor camera, having a private conversation on speaker, with everybody listening, everybody watching, surrounding noise, immobile ('cause you are looking at a screen), always having an impersonal chat with a person that keeps looking away from you (because the person is watching THE SCREEN not the camera), usually holding the phone too low because the arm hurts so you'd be looking at their chin(s).

In real life, you're not alone in your office, away on business, making a call at home where everyone is home at the same time, smiling. You're on the bus, with 20 people peering over, 30 listening, noise drowning the call.

It's the textbook case of special case marketing. Like car commercials, where all streets are empty, all parkings have open spaces, all cars are clean, well maintained and move at 20 kph to be admired, all other traffic participants are good looking, polite, well dressed and fed, weather is sunny and calm, music playing, and you think to yourself "That's it. I'm buying a convertible."

Then you realize that, in a temperate area, you basically have "too cold" from November to April, May if unlucky, "too hot" from June to September. Trust me, I know, the sun will kill you in a traffic jam. That leaves May, October, give or take. Then there's rain, because, you know, weather changes and when that happens it's sort of rains. Cut out those, and you will realize that unless you're in sunny California, your car will be topless (tee hee) about two weeks a year.

And then there's the noise, because you don't drive on an empty, closed country road, you drive to work. Like the other million people around you, with noisy cars, smoke, dust, the elements, the window washers at the intersection, the idiots that have something to say, the idiots who don't, people at the pedestrian crossing talking about tomato recipes and latest screws, horns, birds flying overhead and dropping acid on the leather interior, insects, leaves, idiots that mis-align their window washes and splash, loud music misfits, buses, every single one of these peck away until you raise windows, crank up the heat/AC, cover the car, raise the volume on the stereo so you don't have to hear them any more, and isolate into your own solitude and peace. Wondering what the hell were you thinking getting a convertible.

@ndi: like your post, but could you work India to it somehow?

Just so we're clear, I wasn't necessarily talking about 3G, mobile-to-mobile, or even WiFi for that matter, but n900-to-Google Talk isn't too bad.

VV This part. VV

I use it regularly for business and pleasure, and I'm experiencing very good quality. Everything else being equal, iChat does better video than Google Talk, and Google Talk does better video than Skype. Other's mileage may vary for a plethora of different reasons.

Video calling is mainstream: It's good, easy and affordable. It's here to stay whether you and your colleagues use it or not.

You had me nodding my head in agreement until....you started raggin on ragtops! I always have a convertible in my fleet and I get lots of use out of it. Geesh!

What an epic thread...
Let me add another not-making-a-smallest-difference reply to original post.

Foreword: I'm sleepy and there are going to be errors (English is not my native language). Please point them for me in PM.
Yet there is gonna be the pangalactic wisdom.

Maybe those who are bashing (great shell, BTW) are trying to explain that more effective way is not to restrict, but to cooperate. Though this reaches full effectiveness only in certain situations. This is the better part of them. And greater, I believe. Anyway, who knows.

Many had seen it as clinching proof that the whole of known creation had finally gone bananas. (THGTTG by Douglas Adams)
That's what they (and me too) are trying to get rid of: deifying one thing which particular person uses and defying any other.
We are bashing Nokia for Maemo5 incompleteness (for leaving it without normal fully-functional Ovi Maps, to mention just one point), too. Bashing quite loudly I'd say. Still, apple fans are the most fanatic fans I've ever seen, failing to see the greatness of other things and not taking into account that there is no such thing as generally "the best" without "the best for", "the best by this particular parameter" (and one parameter is very often cancels the ability to make any use of some opposite parameter). It's an interesting sarcastic joke by the apple BTW: call on thinking "different" and banning thinking different. Like, "We promised you difference and now half of the world uses our own closed standards. Owned, LOL!".
Opera has to exist beside safari.
(what a weird text if you read words without knowing software names, lol).
And Firefox has to, even more (and chromium — note by rokssolana, friend of mine).

Is it low-fat?) 'Cuz I'm worried.
IMHO, music should be art, not product. And B.M. Sharp is my hero at the moment.
Is there any competition with lowering prices on apps(t)ore or itunes? It's not rhetorical question, I'm not an apple user and I really don't know. And what about the lowering commission payments to apple?

Instead of doors, uh-huh. BTW, how exactly are those square things called in Mac? Or are they not square but different?
There is plenty of other OSes. Neither microsoft nor apple were not even the first to make windowed interface AFAIN, they only made so much marketing about it.
Greatest innovations are made by people for themselves at first, and not by the corporations, I believe. And they become progress if they are available for anyone without restrictions. (I assume that almost any Maemo app can be executed in SDK, isn't it?)

there was touchscreen phones before iphone. There was touchbooks before ipad. And with USB ports.

and there would be no angryholywars.

I don't hate apple/iphone, I just can't stand fanatics.
Apple is just another corporation that will do more and more to their own good, but not for good of users as long as the users keep deifying them.

P.S. Apple products are not bad, they are just not best for all users as they very actively claim to be. And only that last thing mentioned annoys the hell out of me. As almost any other commercial advertisement/marketing, honestly speaking. Including Nokia ones.

Well, it matters. People are WAY more inclined to use a feature that's free. I've made wifi video calls.

Respectfully, with no actual international figures, your opinion is at best as good as mine. The only exception being, video calls are more expensive and until bandwidth is so cheap it won't matter and both calls will be the same (with marketing being what it is, likely never), then it will never be a good contender to voice calls.

Also, history is on my side. It has been done before, and it failed.

Maybe it's not dead in the womb. Maybe it IS here to stay. I can agree with that. Heck, lower forms of communication refuse to die.

I still think it'll never be mainstream, however, plus, because of privacy and technological limitations it will never be close to other communications: voice, text, yelling, smoke signals and nose picking.

I suppose if we have different perceptions of mainstream, maybe. If I make and receive 50 calls a day, out of which maybe 1-2 are video, is that mainstream? Because I could see it happen, maybe a 5%. I simply don't think a 5% (inter)national average to be mainstream.

You live in a special case location.

Victoaria, Canada
78K pop, 20 km^2 (4k/sqkm)
Temperature average:
high in July/August: 22/22 Celsius (Jesus!)
low in Dec/Jan: 1/1 Celsius (No freeze)

Bucharest, Romania
high in July/August: 39/41 Celsius
low in Dec/Jan: -6 Celsius (Freeze)
1.900 K pop, 220 km^2. (8K/sqkm)

So, you see, I'm talking about a city with 25 times the population, 10 times the area, a 41 AVERAGE in THE SHADE outside the city limits (that means 60 in the sun, asphalt level. Yes, Celsius) and a -6 average, that is, it usually frozen for about 2 months a year, permanently, as in if you don't have a plow or a shovel and a free day you'll drive in the spring.

Don't put up personal experiences as counter-arguments when only a few enjoy your conditions. Those temperatures are reserved for a small portion of the population. Any higher and you'll scorch, any lower and you freeze, and more inland and you don't enjoy that pleasant breeze that keeps nights warm and days cool.

I'm myself native from Constanta, Romania, which is close (climate-wise) to your location. And my bones can tell the difference.

City aside, Canada is 228th out of 239 countries sorted by population density. Also, it's about card density. We have about 1.5 million vehicles registered in the city area alone, minus the through traffic.

If you want the experience, take the car through Toronto. Similar in population and climate, except that three times the area with same population. Just go through and imagine each car is 4 cars wile either freezing or scorching 80% of the year.

Long story short, no wonder you drive a soft top. However, the bulk of the world population can't do it for various reasons.

Besides, it was just to illustrate a point. I never said convertibles are insane, I was just remembering the thought process I had when I thought acquiring about one.

The reason this reply is so long is because other people (sorry to take this out on the forum) have driven me nuts so far with "works for me" arguments, special cases and generally subjective views.

Sorry.

Oh, one more thing. How much (percentile) do you drive top-down? You've got me curious. How many days do you actually pick up the soft top, drop it and drive around like that? I'm still thinking about having one in my old location.

Well, so you know, it is all about me.

98% percent of the time, the top is down while driving.

Otherwise I drive the hardtop or ride the motorcycle.

I use the convertible for around 25% percent of my driving. I drove it today.

By the way I pretty much agree with you about video calling as a feature.

So here's my analogy:
The Video-Phone feature is like a pencil eraser......You don't use it often, but when you need it it sure is great to have.

I love the removable hardtop (targa top) on my Honda Del Sol... a lot!
Hold on a minute... What does ANY of that have to do with what you have against Apple?

This might speak volumes about Nokia's fickle interest in Maemo and how well that manages to hold interests.

The whole video call when driving is intriguing from a Human Factors POV. Drews and Strayer have done alot of research on the effects of cell phone communication (wireless and holding handset) and also just having a passenger near you. The performance for driving while talking on a cell phone (or even texting) has been comparable to the performance of a drunk driver. Some people have argued that the difference between having someone in car versus someone on the phone is that the other individual is assisting with the driving or shuts up when you need to dedicate extra attention to a driving task.

Theoretically if that's the case then it could be tested in a driving simulator, with the front facing camera focusing on the driver's face, or the rear of the camera (if using an iPhone4) on the actual drive could result in less driver error (swaying through lanes, not following posted speed limits, etc..)

Though the university I'm at doesn't have a realistic car driving simulator (though GMU does! It's cool!). Heh, maybe if I decide to get my PhD and I apply to GMU..

You could try to pitch it as a skit for the next Jackass movie. :P