What's better than 2-way video calling nobody uses? 4-way video calling, of course

Even as a heavy user of smartphones, I rarely make a video call and it is usually more as a demo or novelty rather than a need. fring is rolling out support for 4 on a call, but I still wonder if any video calling is needed at this time.

fring was one of the first, if not the first, to bring video calling capability to smartphones and I have been using it for a couple of years on my Nokia S60 devices. They have now expanded to iOS and Android, in addition to Symbian, and are leading the way in video chat again by launching support for Group Video Calls where you can have four people connected at once on a video chat session.

Even though fring, then Qik, brought video calling to smartphones prior to FaceTime, I still find my FaceTime calls to be of higher quality. However, even though I travel quite a bit I still haven't found a really compelling reason to make many video calls. I am not sure if many people are making video calls and it seems to me that having four people on the call will be an even rarer occurrence. You can check out the video below that shows a short demo of fring Group Video Calls:

If you have an iOS or Android device, seems like even fring is giving up on Symbian, then you can sign up for the public beta using this form.

How many readers make video calls? Do you think this is something that still has a couple of years to go before it is popular? I personally would rather see work continue on improving the 2-way video calling service.

Related Topics:

Mobile OS iPhone Apple Mobility Enterprise Software

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