Fring Brings Skype Calls from iPhone & iPod Touch [free app]

Oct 6, 2008

Let’s hear what Fring is from the makers of Fring:

fring™ is a mobile internet service & community that enables you to access & interact with your social networks on-the-go, make free calls and live chat with all your fring, Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!™ and AIM®* friends using your handset’s internet connection.

Fring has now released a free iPhone App in Apple AppStore that lets you access & interact with contacts from multiple social networks in one contact list. Some of the Fring features are:

• One searchable buddy list for all your social/IM networks
• Supports Skype, MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, ICQ, AIM, Twitter, etc.
• Simultaneously engage in multiple conversations via fring chat
• Fring add-ons for Facebook, Orkut, Gmail Notifier, vTap, etc.
• fring brings VOIP to iPod Touch and iPhone
• fring is free

Skype hasn’t come out with a native iPhone App yet and we just talked about Skype for iPhone. But, Fring has made making Skype calls from iPhone and iPod Touch a reality now!

One downside to Fring on iPhone is that you can make Skype calls only on a WiFi connection. So even if you are on a nice fat 3G connection, the only way you can talk to your contacts is by text chat.

But, wait! When has that stopped our friendly hacking community. Looks like there is a cracked fring.ipa file out in the wild (link deleted in the fring forum) that lets you make Skype calls in 3G & Edge networks as well. I did however find a link to the cracked ipa file in iPhone download blog‘s comments. I haven’t gotten a chane to try it yet but it seems simple enough to try it.

It goes something like this:

• uninstall fring in iPhone/iPod Touch
• drag and drop the cracked fring.ipa file into iTunes
• Sync your iPhone to re-install fring
• Make Skype calls in 3G/Edge connections

I’d love to hear what your experience is with this. Enjoy your Skype calls now.