MiKandi’s new Sex Chat Live application (video, NSFW) allows you to have intimate video calls with adult sex workers in the privacy of your own home and on the Android device of your choice. iPhone users need not apply.
If you ask any iPhone 4 user what one of their most favorite features of their new smartphone is, chances are, they’ll probably say either the Retina Display or FaceTime, a built-in VOIP application that allows for 1 to 1 video chat over Wi-Fi connections using the iPhone 4’s front-facing VGA video camera with other iPhone 4 users.
Currently, most Android phones lack front-facing video cameras, and no Google-designed equivalent to FaceTime — such as a Video-enabled “Talk” app for Android currently exists, although webcam-enabled GTalk desktop clients have had video capability for some time now.
The recently released Sprint EVO 4G is one of the few Android handsets to include a front-facing video camera.
Still, for what Android currently lacks in technology sex appeal when compared to the iPhone 4, it makes up for in Sex, period.
Recently, Seattle-based MiKandi, a 3rd-party adult app store for Android recently released Sex Chat Live, a free application which allows for one-on-one paid video chats between the receiver and adult sex workers streamed from BabeChatLive, an established video sex chat business based in the UK.
Also Read: Will The Adult Industry Drive Android Adoption? (November 2009)
When I first covered MiKandi, the store only had one adult application to offer. Now the store has many dozens of applications, which span a wide range of lifestyle choices and categories.
Sex Chat Live, unlike FaceTime, will work over 3G in addition to Wi-Fi. I briefly installed the application and looked at some of its sample content, and the video quality was decent enough. If I wanted to have a 1-on-1 “chat” with one of the women at BabeChatLive, all I would have to do is enter my billing information and for a mere $3 a minute, I could watch these women engage in… well lets just say I’ll leave that up to your imagination.
Currently Mikandi’s app store and Sex Chat Live only works on Android devices, although support for RIM’s BlackBerry and Windows Mobile/Windows Phone is in the works.
Obviously, due to Apple’s stringent policies towards adult content in their App Store, you’ll never see anything like MiKandi or Sex Chat Live on an iOS-based device like the iPhone 4. Certainly, there’s nothing to stop you from using FaceTime to do “Sexy Time” in the privacy of your own home, but the chances of seeing monetized or 3rd-party private video chat apps on that platform for adult-oriented use is next to zero.
This brings up some interesting issues related to application development and the freedoms — or lack thereof — that exist on the Apple iOS and Google’s Android platforms, respectively.
Due to the “Duplication of Functionality” clause in Apple’s SDK agreement, it’s unlikely that many competing apps to FaceTime will ever be developed — such as a video-enabled Google Talk, or perhaps a Cisco video conferencing app which would permit interaction with their Cius devices or their corporate video conferencing/telepresence systems, or a video-enabled version of Skype, for that matter.
I won’t count competing apps to FaceTime out entirely since Opera for iPhone was approved, which duplicates Safari’s functionality in iOS (Note to Opera: Where’s my iPad version?) but when it comes to its own rules, Apple tends to be a very capricious fruit of inconsistent ripeness.
[UPDATE: It already appears that a Chatroulette-style application for iPhone 4, iChatr, was recently yanked from the App Store by Apple due to the fact that people were PRIVATELY using the application to "expose themselves".
Fring has recently been ported to iOS 4, and has been updated for video chat capability, although its Skype video chat functionality no longer works due to a dispute related to API usage with Skype.
Whether the app will continue to be permitted by Apple in its current form based on the reasons for iChatr's recent App Store removal is unknown at this time.]
All of this, and more, however, will eventually end up on Android, once two-way video communication and front-facing cameras are commonplace on those devices. And yes, Sex Chat Live and applications like it will have 2-way video, too.
Will Google’s Android end up having better 2-way video applications than Apple’s iOS? And will the Adult industry, yet again, drive their adoption? Talk Back and Let Me Know.
