fring’s taking it to the big boys here with its latest release of it’s social networking and internet calling app. The app itself lets you connect with all of your friends who also have fring on their mobile. What does this mean? It means you’re able to voice or video call them absolutely free of charge! If your friends aren’t answering, why not send them a free chat message? fring has also gone one step further. The app is able to communicate with Facebook, MSN® Messenger, ICQ®, Google Talk™, Twitter, AIM® & Yahoo!™. This means that your friends can’t escape you, and you can’t escape them.
The app also allows you to update your Facebook status, tweet, and change your fring mood on the go. You can do this via the ‘Stream’ tab, which displays the latest tweets from those you follow on twitter, and the Facebook status updates from your friends on Facebook, etc. You can customize this tab with the platforms you prefer, i.e. you can swap out Facebook for Google Talk via the ‘Add-ons’ screen.
You can also save yourself a small fortune with this free app. fring enables you to directly call any phone number, from as little as 1¢, by using its fringout feature (a full price list is available on their website). The quality of these calls is enhanced by fring’s DVQ (Dynamic Video Quality) Technology, which, fringland ltd claims, gives ‘the best video and audio quality possible by automatically and continuously adjusting your video call quality to match your connectivity.’ That’s a fair way of saying ‘blame your carrier!’ Some users have reported international phone calls being dropped, or not even connecting, despite being charged for the call.
From my use, I can vouch for the quality being marginally better than its main competitor, Skype, but it depends on your carrier if you are using 3G. It is important to note that Wi-Fi will yield arguably better results, but that’s not exactly mobile, is it?
fringland ltd has produced a very neat app. With its great social intergration and call quality, this app will surely match the pace of Skype and other video calling/ chat systems. I would have given this app a higher rating if the few bugs with fring-to-phone calling, were worked out. It would also be an improvement if the stream could be manually refreshed.
