I have used the app over the last few days and here are my findings so far. I'll definatly continue to use it more and keep you posted of anything new. Going to be abroad at the end of the month so will also be able to test it for calling back home 🙂
Interface:
Mostly easy to use and self explanatory. I especially like the integration with the iPhone contacts! Please see other comments below:
Help section: keeps going back to the top of the page each time you looked in an article within it. Now I don't know if this is a limitation of iPhone apps in general but it would be great if it could remember your previous location in the FAQ so you can continue on from there.
Balance: I may have missed it in the FAQ but it's not immediatly clear which countries a certain "Region plan includes" I.E. Mine currenctly says Region 2.
Buy:
Currently you have to type the whole name of a country to find it. Would it maybe be possible to tweak the search to also find them by offical abbreviations for the countries? I.E Germany would be DE or United Kingdom would be UK and so on.
Recents:
While this is identical to the Recents menu of the normal iPhone application would there be any chance to add a prompt before re-dialling a number you previously called? It's one of these features that I can live with but also annoys me on the regular iPhone phone menu. I also know that a lot of my friends feel similar about this after countless occurances of accidently calling people you didn't want to cal - fat fingers 😉
Conversation quality:
I have so far tested the application to call my family over in Germany on a 10MB cable wifi connection. The conversations were much clearer for both the person on the other end as well as me in comparision to other VoIP calling facilities I have used in the past. There was no long delay between speaking and the other person receiving it which I have noticed with other facilities before. Especially when I called my sister on her mobile phone where with equivalen products I had mediocre quality in both calls with her I had crystal clear voice with an occassional "scratch squeak noise" which may have very well been her mobile phone signal. 🙂
I also called a German landline and again the voice quality was much better than other products in the past.
One thing I noticed though is that "premium numbers" (0870 and 090 numbers) the UK appear to be blocked? I decided to see what happens with those out of curiosity and while it said it was "Ringing" nothing actually happened until I ended the call about a minute later. I tried it a few times and guessed that they are indeed blocked after this test. If they are supposed to be blocked (Which I assume as they could be pricey!) it might be good to implement an error message for them so that end-users are aware
Suggestions:
While most calls are shorter would it be possible to add a feature to pre-purchase more than 15 minutes for longer conversations so that you don't get cut off half way throug a conversation? Maybe even encourage people to purchase longer calling plans with discounts?
I am planning to do a few calls with my relatives in the US and Canada to see how far distance calls will work out as well as using it while on holiday in Japan. Will let you know how it goes!
