The timing of yesterday’s Nokia E63 delivery was spot-on, as Om pinged me with some S60 software this morning. It’s called OctroTalk, and although the first iterations have been around since last year, it’s still maturing. At least I hope so, because out of the audio, video and IM functions, I only have the IM working. Perhaps it’s an issue specific to the E63? I’m not sure, so I’ve passed along a note to the OctroTalk folks to see if it’s just me.
Clearly, the application works for some people: here’s a video demo from November showing it working on an N95 courtesy of Symbian-Guru. This demo really illustrates the great promise of OctroTalk’s video calling feature. Of course, that’s likely to work best when your hardware has a front-facing camera, which the E63 doesn’t have. Still, even the audio over web should have worked, in my opinion. Using OctroTalk through Google Talk, James and I tried valiantly to have a voice chat, but no such luck. In fact, one effort completely rebooted the phone on me.
I’ll update the post if I hear back from the OctroTalk folks or if I get the app working. I’m no “Symbian-Guru,” so, again, it could be me. Still, I’ve spent nearly 30 minutes trying to get things going. If it takes me that much effort, most folks probably wouldn’t get too far as they’d give up sooner. While I wait for troubleshooting, I’m going to text like it’s 1999 on this 2009 smartphone.
Update: The OctroTalk support folks and I have had e-mails all day. Turns out that the issue is due to my using a Google Apps for Domains account, not a standard Google Account. This link explains how to enable the Google Apps account, but I’m not going to have our admin mess with the settings. Instead, I’m using my regular old Gmail account and I already see the icon indicating voice chats in OctroTalk. That’s a good sign, so I’ll test further.
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