Mariam Dholkawala's Blog

The coming flood of Flash Phones

Flash phones don’t always mean Flash Lite enabled phones…and there are companies out to prove that!

Flash phones are actually a service offered, to make calls directly from the browser using VOIP. Unlike the earlier installable applications like Skype or Gizmo who provided the same services of making calls, Flash phones don’t require any installation as they run directly off a browser….and they are completely free.

Just last month I read about a Russian company starting a flashphone service, and now I there is India’s TringMe providing a Flash-based SIP phone which you can configure to use with any VOIP provider. TringMe is also working on a mobile VOIP service that will let you make SIP calls from your phone’s browser over a 3G data network, however it will be interesting to see if they do it in Flash Lite or not.

Another interesting read related to Flash phones is about Ribbit who are also soon to introduce an entire development platform for building Flash phones. Ribbit’s development platform is already in private beta and allows programmers to build Web phones that can make, receive, and record calls, send voice messages, and manage contacts. Ribbit runs the back-end VOIP service, and it supports applications built on both Adobe Flex and AIR.

A developer has already used Adobe AIR and Ribbit to create an Adobe AIR iPhone that looks just like a regular iPhone and can actually make calls from your desktop.

Labels: General

posted by Mariam Dholkawala @ 6:40:00 PM