The Truphone
mobile VoIP service announced support for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) chat into its iPhone app. This comes just a couple weeks after adding instant messaging support for Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.
The Truphone iPhone app is free from the Apple App Store. The key benefit of Truphone is its ability to let you make free VoIP calls to any other Truphone or Google Talk user, and cheap international calls to any landline or mobile phone. The addition of instant messaging and Twitter are “nice to have” features that make Truphone a Swiss Army knife of communications.
Truphone's support for Skype calls announced last month at Macworld has not been added yet, as they continue to work out quality of service issues.
My take? Truphone is interesting, but if you're in the U.S., your AT&T plan already gives you free long distance in the continental U.S.. Truphone won't impress you unless you're a geek or you really make a lot of international calls.
Truphone is also available for many other platforms, including G1, Blackberry and some Nokia phones.
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