Face-On with 1-888-FACETIME

Yesterday I mentioned how a friend in Austin had managed to get two iPhone 4 devices. He had been telling me all about the magic of FaceTime but had been testing it on his own WiFi network.

After reading David's article where he detailed how terrible his FaceTime experience was, I asked my friend, Rob Bonner, to put it to the test.

Apple recently rolled out a dedicated FaceTime testing number so Rob cleaned himself up and then dialed up 1-888-FACETIME. I've detailed his experience below:

1. Dialed the number. Was put on hold. 2. A person on the other end picked up the call and then transferred it to his iPhone.

From there Rob said that the experience was "stellar". The quality of the video and audio was perfect, with both perfectly in sync at all times. Rob also mentioned that the Apple employee was more than happy to walk him through the features available with FaceTime, including moving your video feed around the screen, docking the phone in landscape mode, and a couple of others.

One feature that I like is that once you make the FaceTime connection, it stores it in your recents list as a FaceTime call. So, in the future you can just start with FaceTime. Obviously Apple is trying to make a FaceTime call the new standard, so this is a great way to get people used to using the service.

While Rob says that the quality was "stellar", the pictures above tell a slightly different story. Then again, compared to the video quality of the video calls that we did using the HTC EVO with Fring and Qik, video quality is definitely a subjective thing.

I haven't been able to try out the video calling with FaceTime myself yet, but will definitely report back when I do.

UPDATE: Rob wanted me to point out that the pictures are a single frame of a 25 FPS (estimated) video. He does say that the call was much clearer than the image that he grabbed on the phone.

Have you "FaceTime'd" with anyone yet? What has your experience been?