3 Skypephone Mobile Phone Review: The future of Mobile VoIP

You only need to sign in - as you would normally do on your desktop Skype client - to get started; It stays in the foreground and can be minimised without having to log out of your Skype account.

Using Skype itself is quite straight forward and you can make calls or chat within a few seconds.

Voice quality is quite good and although it doesn't match a desktop-bound Skype call, it is a testament to the great job that Skype and Three have achieved.

The conversation flow occasionally breaks especially when you start moving around but the problem doesn't get worse on a train.

The embarked Skype application provides with most of the features that you would find on the desktop version like the ability to change your status, add and remove contracts.

But you won't be able to do video calls (obviously) or do conference calls or add multiple users to a chat.

Ironically, the Skypephone does support video calling but as there is no secondary facial camera, this feature is worthless except if you want to make a video call using a mirror.

Althought the Skypephone has a strong affiliation with the Ebay owned VoIP provider, you still have access to a number of free services including MSN Messenger.