Gizmo is one of the applications bundled with the Nokia N80i. If you don’t find it immediately taking a look at “Internet” -> “Internet Telephone”, you can easily install it by using the Nokia Download service.
In contrast with what you imagine, Gizmo VoIP on the Nokia N80i is not a VoIP “stand-alone” application, but it’s a pre-installed configuration of the integrated SIP user agent of the Nokia N80i.
Unlike N93 and N73, N80i’s SIP stack is fully functional and you can configure the internal SIP client to work with whatever SIP service you want. Gizmo Project is one of them, pre-installed into the device. I even configured that client with Abbeyphone and Truphone, that I’ll test later.
The first shot hasn’t been successful, since my phone has frozen. After configuring Gizmo with my username and password, I set it as default and tried to register. I’ve been asked to choose a data connection and I used my home wifi. I think the signal was a little bit low, so after a failed connection, I was unable to use it again, unless restarting the phone. Is it an issue with the way N80i handles networking ?
So, I tried a second shot and it has been a failure again. It seems something went wrong while connecting to my home wifi. The problem is that nothing was working any more, unless turning the phone off and on again. I’m now convinced that there’s a big issue in the networking capabilities of the N80i. Phoneboy, what do you think ?
Finally, the last shot was ok and Gizmo was finally up and running. I made a test call and everything was working well. Quality was good and, at this time, I haven’t found any particular issue. To be honest, I thought it would have been an easier process, even because the proxy and register configuration were automatically setup by the Gizmo wizard. However, it’s not a fault of Gizmo, but of the unstable networking stack of the N80i (I’ll try to look for a firmware update…).
So, what the user experience has been? Well, nothing more than configuring a SIP client to work with whatever VoIP service available, made easy by the Gizmo wizard which do this configuration automatically. Someone is asking himself where is Gizmo here and someone else is wondering why only the Nokia N80i and the Nokia 770 Tablet are supported.
In this perspective and in my opinion, applications like Fring do a better job with mobile VoIP, bringing a presence-enabled contact list and the ability to make pure VoIP calls to your friends even belonging to different VoIP networks like Skype or GTalk. At this time, a contact list is a must-have for a mobile VoIP service.
In conclusion, I think it’s a first attempt to push Gizmo Project to the mobile world, even if without a standalone Symbian client with a contact list and other services available in the standard version of the Gizmo VoIP client. Will it be successful ? Who knows, but I can say for sure that Michael Robertson did a great deal with Nokia, being the first VoIP service pre-installed in a VoIP-enabled Nokia phone.
Please stay tuned because I’ll post a review of other two VoIP services I’ve configured on my N80i, Abbeyphone and Truphone.
Technorati Tags: symbian, n93, abbeyphone, gizmo project, mobile VoIP, truphone, om malik, michael robertson, n73, nokia, gizmo voip, n80i, alec saunders, luca filigheddu
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