Video Calling over GPRS for Smartphone!!!!

[Guest Chaser81]

Apologies if this has been posted before, but whilst googling, I stumbled across Microsoft's R&D website and a new Smartphone program called Portrait.

From what I can gather, this appears to be a program which allows users to make live Video Conferencing calls over either dial up GSM or GPRS. The product is a prototype and will probably not be bug free, but imagine having this on your smartphone! Who needs 3G and shove it up your a*** SonyEricsson!!

You can download the file from this website: http://research.microsoft.com/~jiangli/portrait/

Take important note of the Installation instructions though because the file includes both PPC and Smartphone installers:

"To install Microsoft Portrait into a Smartphone, please take the following steps. After the installation process in your PC is completed, please find a file named portraitSP.ARM.CAB in your PC's installation directory (the default directory is C:Program FilesMicrosoft ActiveSyncMicrosoft Portrait), and copy it directly into your Smartphone (such as directory WindowsStart Menu), and then run the CAB file from the program menu in your Smartphone. Please note some Smartphones without certification free may not be able to install such applications. If you want to unlock your Smartphone to install these applications, you may consider to update software http://www.orange.com/english/forwardthink...ate2.asp?bhcp=1 or manually unlock http://msmobiles.com/article.php/20.html.

A special way to test Microsoft Portrait on your Smartphone is that you establish a communication between Microsoft Portrait on your Smartphone and Microsoft Portrait on your PC as follows. You use a USB cable to connect your Smartphone to your PC and make Activesync active. You check the "Use a HTTP proxy server" box in Tools->Proxy settings in Microsoft Portrait on your Smartphone, input the IP address of your PC to the proxy address, and input 8100 as the port number of the proxy. After that, you input the IP address of your PC to the address bar of Microsoft Portrait on your Smartphone to call. Please note the above settings are only suitable to USB cable connection between your Smartphone and your PC.

If you use GPRS or CDMA on your Pocket PC or Smartphone, please note Microsoft Portrait currently cannot automatically invoke dialing up to GPRS or CDMA network. Please run Internet Explorer first, which can invoke your GPRS or CDMA connection, then go to Microsoft Portrait to place a call or sign in to .NET Messenger Service. "

All software is obviously the copyright of Microsoft and read the licence agreement before downloading.

[Guest crafty]

Old news - try a search on the forum for Portrait. While you can get this to run on a smartphone, the program does not support the camera, so you can use it to make slow expensive VoIP calls. It's a shame as back in the good old unlimited GPRS days this looked pretty promising. Also no MS Smartphones have the camera and screen on the same side (not counting that cable that surfaced to attaching the clip on camera for the SPV/E100) kinda ruling out video confrencing.

:)

[Guest Chaser81]

Cheers crafty for clarifying, and apologies to all for reposting old news. You are right, would have been nice. Never mind, eh? :-)