Fring gets a roasting as 'unreliable'

Fring does not work for me. The audio quality over WiFi connection (802.11g, 3 meters from the access point) is absolutely dismal and the program itself runs very sluggishly on an E70 phone (OMAP1, 208MHz). A few times Fring just crashed before I had a chance to select the callee.

Overall, Fring works fine as a messenger, but I agree on the audio part. I mostly use it to voice chat with my messenger buddies. In most cases, my voice goes through, but I am not able to clearly hear my buddies.

Also, while chatting, if a sms or a call comes through, fring goes offline and its a task to get it back online. Sometimes I have to shut the app and restart it.

I am so pleased to read people talking about this. Fring for me has always been very unreliable with its Skype implementation, and Skype is the reason why I installed it.

For me, the critical question is, where is the native Skype app for Symbian that was promised a long time ago? Have Skype just given up? Because right now, Fring is just too patchy.

Fring is a great idea poorly executed. Everything from the crappy interface which doesn't differenciate between Voice Capable chat contacts and regular skype contacts, to the incredibly poor reliability. It crashes all the time on my N82. I gave up after the initial couple of days it took for the novelty to wear off. They released a new version a while ago and I installed that and gave it another try. My mic didn't work suddenly! So it got even worse.

works ok on my n80, in that it doesn't crash on me, but I don't rate the call quality, the speed to connect & retrieve my contacts. Sometimes it cannot even resolve the contact names correctly.

Fring remains installed on the phone but I cannot remember the last time I used it. As with jmosen I only installed it for Skype use so all I can say is Skype should get on and release an official client for S60 with suppost for sending SMS.

For calls over wlan I use Truphone. It's an overall better experience, and I'm still liking these free landline calls till June.

Hi all

Well unlike the previous posters Fring has always worked well for me since i initially used it with my N93 and then my E61 and am now using it with my E90. But i only use it for Skype calls over WiFi sometimes it takes a little while for my contacts to load but voice quality has always been acceptable if not most of the time better than through my Computer. Maybe if it was a paid for app i may have more to complain about but as it is and has always been free and gives me the ability to make totally cost free Skype to Skype calls i will continue to use it. It is also much better than many of the other solutions i have tried that cost you to make Skype calls the only exception being the 3 Skypephone that i was fortunate to test as that really was excellent.

Marc

N95 8GB a few metres from 2mb wifi trying to use Skype with Fring:

Absolute rubbish. That's if it connects.

Same with E65 a while ago. I heard talk a few weeks ago that an S60 client for Skype was due to be released any minute? Any news from anyone?

Agree that Truphone works very well over wifi and 3G's acceptable too - free calls for the moment too, which they've kept on extending over the past 12 months or so.

Rik

I've only tried a previous version with a hotel lobby WiFi connection but couldn't get it to work with my E61i. I've found iSkoot to be trouble-free -- and I figure they'll be around for a while since they're the guys who power that new Skypephone...

It seems to work quite well on the E90 .
It does crash about about 1 in 10 times it is used and causes a reboot every 1 in 15 times - especially if a voice call is received when connected.
It really hates dropping down to GSM/EDGE, but works well with 3G/HSDPA.

Call quality is good with Skype and with MSN it has that familar washed out/echo sound - but that is because of MSN not because of Fring.
Therefore if using Fring to someone on MSN - talk slowly and wait for the echo to pass.

When used with text messages - the feature I miss which Agile on 9500 had is saving of the message history to a file.
But then saving the communication log to a file would also help - especially as unlike the 9500 (Series 80) you cannot print the call logs (to a file) on Series 60.

Conclusion:
Worth putting up with but needs some work on stability.

I too am tired of waiting for a decent Skype S60 client. All I really want is Skype chat, Fring is too unreliable and does not reliably seem to connect and stay connected using my Skype account.

Where is the official Skype S60 client?

have the time Fring won't even load; it gets confused between the EDGE and wifi connections, the voice quality with skype is terrible, and the interface is awful. I just wanted to use skype chat and send SMSs.

I'm using fring for year (Israel) and just very happy with it. First of all, audio quality over 3g network is good enough from fring skype to landline phone and over wi-fi or 3,5g it's the same as from cellular network. Now price - normal call from cellular to landline is about 18 cent per minute- and via data (skype pro) - 3 cent per call (no time limit) + 0.01 cent per minute data usage (200mb - 20$). The numbers are telling for themselfs. And i do use to call computers as well all around the world for only data usage price from anywhere in the country (even my car, mountains ets.).

Fring is awful. I like entire concept, but it has lived up to it's end of the deal. It's way too unreliable.

Messaging works fine on last version for UIQ3,...voice is so so, i think it can be improved

Yes, I found Fring absolutely useless, but Truphone works like a charm.

I seem to going out on a limb here... but I've been using Fring as a messenger client for over a year and I love it. The current version is stable and works for me. I had it on my old e65 and now have it on my (brilliant) e51. The messenger side of it is great. I don't use it for Skype calls, but Skype chat works beautifully. I would not like to be without it, and haven't found a decent replacement!

I used to use it as my IM client, but it froze up evertime... it took a few hours.. but it usually froze, I'd have to force it closed. So I changed to Octrotalk, seems stable. I'll only use it to skype (not very often)

I use fring on my N95 (v20) and I've used it quite extensively a while back on WiFi, EDGE and 3.5G in different parts of the world, not so much now due to some bugs in the new version.

It works but it does have problems which unfortunately seem to pile up with each new release. Interestingly, the first version of fring, about 3-4 updates back, I installed worked much better than the current version which has some irritating bugs like its inability to remember a hidden SSID WiFi AP and extremely slow and patchy Skype log-on.

But when it works, voice quality is good to useable, depending on your bandwidth. Text chat works but isn't bug free as AIM's SMS gateway feature seems to cause fring to print out weird messages.

I'd pay money for this app but for me, stability or at least predictability will far more important than a ton of features.

fring is a steaming pile of dog turd as a Skype client.

after registering on forum.nokia and download the latest aps api(aps2.42), fring works perfect even on edge.. had trouble as well with the old aps api but with the new one it works great!

It occasionally works, the main bugbear from my point of view is that when you try to minimize the application, it crashes the interface, requiring a reboot.

Done the same thing on both N95's i installed it on

actually the fring is working perfectly on my E90, try installing the latest version, I only use it for MSN (voise calls and chatting), I used it for hours and the call quality was better than the pc.

For me, the critical question is, where is the native Skype app for Symbian that was promised a long time ago? Have Skype just given up?

A very good question indeed.

They released an excellent official native Skype client on Nokia's N800 internet tablet within months of its launch last year, and the N800 has a far smaller userbase than Nokia's S60 devices.

Skype's behaviour doesn't make any sense on the surface, it seems like there must be more to the situation than meets the eye (perhaps phone network operators are terrified of Skype on S60 and are somehow blocking this?).

The irony is that I can already make and receive Skype calls through my tablet using an S60 phone as a modem.

who all this unknown people?! ghosts.. mm most probably..
except some (rare) probs w voice fring is a good app and every new version proves this. the only problem is 'human factor'

Every '3' e65 and n95 has got skype loaded, so maybe they have signed a deal with '3'?

I already commented on Fring's functionality (or lack thereof) at http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/7039_Fring_gets_a_roasting_as_unrel.php . So far it's not functionally complete, I don't care about its reliability.

Lots of problems while using fring (3g).
Sometimes takes ages to connect (even when I have 100% 3.5g signal) and the
quality is very low.

Except for occasionally freezing and needing to be rebooted, I find fring (on my N73) very reliable (including voice quality) for fring calls, skype calls and chat which is what I use it for. Its early days yet for mobile voip (maybe Skype's delayed launch is a hint that its not such an easy feat) so I guess the trade off is to wait for a smoother ride, or put up with a few minor hickups but get it today.

Steve, thanks for mentioning the other elements of fring which the program didn't show and also for pointing out that data speeds and network coverage play an important part in the user experience. Also, the Gadget Show focused on the voice element and didn�t show the great IM functionality, rich live chat with all of your internet communities, real time presence, and the new file transfer features all of which our users tell us they love.

Still, the feedback and comments on the show and in your blog are very important and helpful in focusing our attention on those things that are important to our users. I want to tell to all those who posted comments, that our R&D guys have resource dedicated to continually improving the fring client, and we'll feed all of the comments made on your blog into that process, making sure they are being addressed.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment, have a great weekend, and watch fring over coming week�s for some very exciting news. Cheers, Roy from fring ([email protected])