Truphone demo world's first VoIP calls on an iPhone

Link: blognation USA » Blog Archive » BN Exclusive: TruPhone to Launch VoIP Client on iPhone

Blognation are reporting they’ve witnessed the first ever VoIP phone calls made from an Apple iPhone, courtesy of mobile VoIP provider Truphone. It’s still early days – the demo apparently required a bit of phone hacking – but this could be an important milestone in the iPhone’s early history.

To say the application isn’t yet ready for prime time would be a pretty major understatement as it currently requires the use of terminal on the iPhone to tell the iPhone to use its on-board SIP stack to place the call over WiFi instead of via the SIM card. To use the terminal application, in turn requires that you first Jailbreak the phone using an application like iBrickr or iFuntastic. This is not an application for the inexperienced or the faint of heart.

Interestingly enough, you don’t need to SIM unlock the phone to use another network – it’ll work fine in it’s standard AT&T (and soon to be O2, T-Mobile and Orange) flavour.

Word is Truphone for the iPhone will be available for beta testing in about a month’s time – head on over to this page and register your details if you’re interested in giving it a spin.

Update: Andy Abramson has got a video clip of the Truphone on iPhone demo here