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Comment by mclin | Hacker News Reader

It's not smart phones that do this legacy video chat, it's 3G feature phones, which are pretty much non-existent in NA. Pretty much every [candybar, flip] phone in asia has 3G and a front facing camera, so you can video call anyone, anytime. Part of the reason people don't is because it costs extra.

Actually since these phones were around before youtube and real mobile browsing, the main marketed reason to get a 3G phone originally was video chat.

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I honestly did not realize that the adoption of them was that widespread. Thank you for the correction, that definitely does make a difference to my post.

Still, don't you think that video chat at no extra cost will be a rather huge innovation? If part of the reason it isn't used is because of the cost, wouldn't make it free help that? I know that video calling isn't necessarily better in plenty of cases, so I don't think it will completely replace voice calls (at least not for a long, long time if at all), but the facts that it's

1) free and

2) has Apple behind it and

3) therefore tons of media hype behind it

will help usage (edit: changed from adoption make my meaning clearer) by a large margin?

Yea, who knows. At least it'll set the trend to put front cameras in smart phones. Eventually the capability will spread enough that you can use it when you want, but I suspect that after the novelty wears off people will go back to regular calls, even if it's free.

Why? People are really good at perceiving presence even if we can't see someone. It's just not necessary.

Think about this: What fraction of time do you spend looking at a person's face in a casual conversation?

"And you can use the rear camera, so they can see what you're seeing"

Not to mention: Are you really going to do video chat while you're walking down the street? Driving in your car (god I hope not)?

The 'mobile' in 'mobile phone' seems directly at odds with the whole concept.

I pretty much agree. With ease and ubiquity it will be very useful for some tasks ("hey honey, which of these lamps do you like better"), and for some "big moment" calls ("this is your new grandson"). So, it can be significant even without being a large fraction of overall calls.

Most people like being able to get away with all those little things that the other person can't hear over a phone. Being on camera would seem more stifling/restrictive than freeing in many situations.

This really isn't that big of a shift from Skype et al. until it's available on 3G. And you know what? I haven't used a webcam in years. Not an extraordinarily useful piece of technology, and it's still not the best experience even on wired networks (because the wired networks have been frozen in time here in the States.)

And as for it being at normal data rates on 3G, I'll believe it when I see it. (It can't be free.)

Speaking of Skype, it's free to make calls over 3G now on the iPhone with (Skype v2). HOWEVER, that will change in September when at&t will start charging a monthly skype fee. I seriously doubt at&t will let anyone do videoconferencing without getting a piece of the pie.

I think people are underestimating how much of a barrier usability is w.r.t. making video calls. The reason people like voice calls is because it gets the job done quickly. I am not sure how Apple has implemented video calls. But imagine if their implementation is as follows: 1) You call somebody via a voice call 2) The call goes through and you start talking 3) The apple clients on both devices detect that they are connected to WiFi and they start setting up a video call connection in the background while you are still chatting 4) In about 10s after the conversation started, you start getting a video feed.

Wouldn't that be awesome? Wouldn't you use this free feature if it came at no cost? I know I'd LOVE it.

Other than the points highlighted above (and cost of video call), the big question is how are video calls done in Asia. Does it require the user to spend more than 3-4 secs to set up a video call (check if the other person has video call support, is he on the same network, do some prior WiFi settings, etc.). If so then that is a big barrier. And Apple definitely has the usability smarts to break that down.

Normal 3G video chat has one disadvantage: the video quality is so bad it makes puppies weep. Most of the time you can't really see who you're talking to unless you already know who it is. It's probably mostly due to bad encoders, and partly lack of bandwidth.

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