Skype saddles up on Sony Ericsson's Symbian smartphones

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 18 June 2010 17:11

Your IT - Mobility

Billing Symbian as 'the world's most popular smartphone platform', Skype has finally made its eponymous software available to Sony Ericsson Satio, Vivaz and Vivaz Pro users, with these three phones running the Symbian ^1 OS - but does it work using Bluetooth?!

Skype, the free Internet phone calling software that ushered in an era of simple and reliable PC to PC Internet telephony, has certainly grown a lot since its early days.

Skype's initial claim to fame, beyond having been created by the same team that brought Kazaa to the world, was reliable Internet telephony that 'just worked' using the same kind of peer to peer technology that made Kazaa a success.

This was a crucial fact at the time given that competing instant messaging platforms could also make voice calls but never did so in a reliable manner, and Skype changed that forever, with hundreds of millions now taking Skype calling for granted across a variety of platforms, from PCs to smartphones, to Skype-enabled HDTVs and dedicated Skype handsets.

Skype has been available for Nokia Symbian users for some years now, and was recently re-released for Symbian in December 2009 when a new beta of Skype for Symbian was launched (focusing on a range of Nokia Symbian handsets, with the 'gold' version released in February this year.)

Skype also recently introduced the long awaited Skype-to-Skype voice call feature over 3G for the iPhone platform, and now, Skype is introducing a version of its software for Sony Ericsson Vivaz, Vivaz Pro and Satio users, with these three models exclusively using the Symbian ^1 software platform, as opposed to Sony Ericsson's (SE) own smartphone OS or the Android OS that it also uses.

Skype for SE Symbian ^1 works as you'd expect - it allows SE Skype users to make calls to other Skype users whether the SE phone is connected to Wi-Fi, 3G, GPRS or EDGE networks.

These Skype-to-Skype calls are listed as being 'free'¦ to other Skype users anywhere in the world', with the caveat that Skype urges its customers to ensure they are on an 'unlimited' data plan - or presumably at least a generous data plan - and warns that there may be extra roaming data charges if you are connecting to a phone network when travelling overseas and using Skype.

Naturally, in this instance, you are better off finding a Wi-Fi access point to connect to before making Skype calls, as roaming data charges make roaming voice charges look puny in comparison.

Skype for SE Symbian also lets its users 'save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad', 'send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups', 'share pictures, videos and other files', 'receive calls to their existing online number', 'see when Skype contacts are online and available to call or IM', and 'easily import names and numbers from the phone's address book'.

Continued on page two - please read on for comment from Skype and info on where SE Symbian users can download the free Skype software!