Palm OS smartphones and PDAs get SIP VOIP client

THERE ARE thousands of PalmOS PDA and smartphone users out there, specially with the ever more popular Treo 650 and the new 700p. Now these users can enjoy voice over IP (VOIP) calls.

Treo owners and PDA users alike have been waiting for a "Skype for PalmOS" of sorts for months, and while the SkypeBay company has not delivered a Palm OS client, some have went as far as to install some kludge apps that interface to a PC with a broadband connection, all to get voice over IP.

PalmOS based smartphones -here my Xplore M98 browsing the web over GPRS- until now lacked a standards-based VOIP application.
Articulation does SIP.

Well, you need to wait no more. What looks like a single-man company and UK software developer dubbed "Hampton Software" has released the first Palm OS based Voice-over-IP client, strangely named " Articulation" and currently at version 1.1.4 at the time of this writing.

Articulation on the PalmOS 5.0 launcher

The software application is only 255K in size and supports any PalmOS PDA or smartphone running Palm OS v5.0 or higher, which has Internet connectivity. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, EVDO/EDGE and GPRS (GSM) are supported. You can use it to connect to any Voice over IP service which uses the open SIP protocol, and setup is as simple as entering the SIP server and "Domain name" provided by your SIP VOIP service, and then your sip user name -normally this is your SIP phone number- and your password. The Articulation web page provides a list of SIP services that the program has been tested with over here.

Connecting to the net over Wi-Fi from a PalmOS PDA

The program has been reported to work on Treo PalmOS smartphones, and PDAs like the T|X and T5 -these two need an external microphone. Finally, the program supports silence suppression for lower GPRS data charges and the low-bandwidth GSM codec that is useful in coping with slow GPRS data connections. A mailing list is available here and you can also post your questions in a web based forum. The author, Neil, is very responsive and often fixes bugs as soon as you report them.

Articulation connected to SIP VOIP provider Brujula.NET

Users of Sony Clie PDAs will be happy to know that the author is hard at work trying to make his program work on Clies, which were notorious for having a non-standard sound API. There are bugs that still need to be squashed on this front, but brave souls might want to try the experimental version for Clies, available here.

VOIP parameters configuration
Picture on Xplore M98 GSM smartphone from GSPDA

Bad news: my mobile company apparently filters VOIP connections
and UDP packets over GPRS

The program is selling for $37, which includes free access to updates. The developer has also announced that he's working on the next version which will include support for multiple accounts, and the ability to work in the background.µ

See also:
PalmOS revived with Treo 700p release
GroupSense and Qool Labs make nice PalmOS GSM phones
Palm OS is going Linux