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Comment by docgnome | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm just dumb, but I don't really understand why video chat on a phone is a big deal. Most of the time when I'm on the phone, I'm walking around town, or what have you. The rest I'm already sitting at my desk in front of my computer. I'd think if I video chatted and tried to walk around I'd just end up hurting myself, and if I sat down, I'd rather be on my computer with a larger screen...

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Different use cases for different people. I'd love to have video chat on my phone for when I travel for work. It'd be great to video chat with my kids while I'm away. We could do that with our laptop, but that'd require me to be in my hotel room, with my lap. Then I'd have to call my wife, have her dig out her laptop.. etc. Basically it's enough of a pain that we never do it, we just have plain old fashioned voice calls.

But, if video chat was integrated into our phones (and particularly if it wasn't restricted to wifi only like FaceTime), then video chat would be as easy and frictionless as voice calls. I think I'd probably use it a lot under those conditions.

One of the main selling points of Apple FaceTime was that the front cam was positioned in such a way that the video call made it look like the two callers were looking at each other directly, rather than looking at a screen, which made the video call seem much more natural.

I wouldn't make a video call while walking around, but I'd much rather make a FaceTime call than use skype on my laptop, especially if its with a loved one.

Very well said, and I agree to a certain extent. We'll have to see what actual users have to say about this.

My guess is that the portability of the front camera on the phone means that you can not only show yourself, but also point to things around you at ease. This isn't something that can be done easily with a computer (or even a laptop for that matter).

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