The number one reason to install mobile voice, video, and chat app Fring on your smartphone was to be able to make and receive Skype calls on platforms that don’t have fully functional Skype apps. Even though there’s a Skype app for iPhone, for instance, it doesn’t support video chat. Fring does… or rather did.

A few days ago Fring launched an updated iOS app with support for 2-way video chat over the Skype and Fring networks. But due to network congestion issues, Fring announced it would temporarily disable Skype.

Today, Fring issued a few statements suggesting that Skype had blocked Fring from accessing the network altogether — something which Skype denies. It’s turning into a he said/she said kind of story. Skype says Fring was violating its terms of use, and Fring says Skype has shut the door on “openness.”

But here’s the bottom line: You can still use Fring to make voice and video calls — but not over the Skype network. And if you don’t have a number of contacts already using Fring, that means there’s not really much reason to install the app on your phone anymore.

Unfortunately this means there’s still no official Skype app for most Android users (except for those on the Verizon network). And there’s no official Skype app for any mobile platform that supports video calls.

Sure, Adobe Flash may be a new thing for Google Android users, but there have been a few ways to watch Flash video on Windows Mobile phones for a while. You could use a browser like Internet Explorer that supports Flash Lite or a browser like Skyfire that skirts the issue altogether by using server-side compression.

Now there’s another option. A new browser called uZard is on the scene, and among other things, it supports full-screen Adobe Flash video playback. Members of the xda-developers forum report it even works with Hulu (although it’s probably just a matter of time before Hulu blocks the browser).

The browser also reportedly supports Silverlight and audio and video codecs including WMV, MP3, and AAC. That’s because uZard uses server-side rendering the same way Skyfire does.

It looks like there are actually three versions of the uZard web browser. uZard P relies on server-side rendering, while uZard S is a WebKit-based browser. uZard H combines the features of the other two browsers.

via PocketNow

When Opera launched Opera Mini 5 beta for Windows Mobile last month, the browser was only officially made available for devices running Windows Mobile 5 and 6. That’s hardly surprising. I can’t remember the last time I saw a new application released that was compatible with Windows Mobile 2003. But you know what? It turns out Opera Mini 5 is compatible with older versions of the operating system — it’s just that the installer file wasn’t designed to work with them.

But Smartphone Magazine’s Werner Ruotsalainen repackaged the CAB installer so that it works perfectly on devices running Windows Mobile 2003 and 2003SE. And it runs beautifully on my aging Dell Axim X50v PDA.

The Dell Axim has a speedy 624MHz Intel XScale processor and a nice big 640 x 480 pixel VGA display. It would be ideal for surfing the web if it weren’t hampered by an aging version of Pocket Internet Explorer. Opera Mini 5 provides all of the features we’ve come to expect from a modern web browser including full page views, double-tap to zoom, browser tabs, and a start page with shortcuts to your most frequently visited sites.

If you have an old Windows Mobile device lying around, you should really give Werner’s repackaged Opera Mini 5 installer a try.

Because Opera actually compresses pictures and other data remotely, the browser offers fairly zippy page load times even on devices with slower processors. It also features Opera Link, which lets you synchronize your bookmarks and other data with the desktop version of the Opera’s browser.

You can check out my hands-on video with Opera Mini 5 beta on my Dell Axim X50v after the break.

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Facebook Chat for Windows Mobile is a free app that does exactly what you think — and then some. In addition to letting you chat with your Facebook contacts on your mobile device, the program lets you see your status feed. You can also upload photos and videos to Facebook from your phone, and receive notifications and new messages on your phone.

Basically, the app has a built in browser that lets you navigate the Facebook mobile page. But the chat and alert tabs make it worth checking out Facebook Chat for Windows Mobile as an alternative to simply visiting m.facebok.com in your mobile browser.

The program is available for Windows Mobile 5.0 and newer devices.

via Pocket Hacks

There are two interesting developments taking place on the mobile web browser front. Opera has submitted its Opera Mini browser for the iPhone to Apple for approval. This is an uphill battle since Apple generally rejects all apps that duplicate the functionality of core iPhone software — and the iPhone already has a web browser.

Opera Mini does work differently from Safari for the iPhone. By offloading some of the work of rendering web pages to remote servers, it speeds up the page load time for many web sites.

Basically, when you navigate to a page with a lot of images and other rich media content, rather than relying on your phone’s CPU to process the page, Opera Mini sends a request to Opera’s servers to compress the images and shoot them to your phone. But it’s not at all clear that this is enough to differentiate Opera Mini from Safari. So I’d be rather surprised if Apple actually approves the app.

The other big story du jour is Mozilla’s decision to cease development of Firefox for Windows Mobile. This is due to Microsoft’s decision to insist that all third party Windows Phone 7 Series apps be built using Silverlight and the XNA gaming framework. But Microsoft’s native apps aren’t built on either platform, and Mozilla says if Microsoft isn’t going to provide tools for developing native applications, then Mozilla isn’t going to bother developing fro the platform.

Mozilla could theoretically continue development of a mobile browser for Windows Mobile 6.5, but since Microsoft is clearly moving in another direction, that means the software could become outdated rather quickly. Instead Mozilla will focus on building Firefox for Android and Maem/MeeGo devices.

Opera Mini, meanwhile, is already available for Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, and all Java based phones.

You can check out a demo video of Opera Mini for the iPhone after the break.

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Microsoft launched an updated version of Outlook Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.1 phones last week. Outlook 1.0 for Windows Mobile 6.1 provides some features that were previously only available on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, including support for Microsoft Exchange Server 200. Some of the new features include:

• Over-the-air updates
• Sync SMS messages to Exchange
• Group messages by conversation
• Free/busy calendar lookup
• Text transcriptions of your voicemail messages

You can download the update by connecting your Windows Mobile 6.1 phone to an Exchange Server 2010. You should get a notice that there’s an update available. There’s no standalone download, and you won’t get all of the nifty new features if you’re not using your phone to connect to an Exchange server.

via ZDNet

Opera is bringing both of its mobile web browsers out of beta. Opera Mobile 10 is available for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 phones. This mobile browser supports tabbed browsing, Opera’s Speed Dial feature, which gives you 9 shortcut icons on your home screen, and the ability to synchronize your data with the desktop version of Opera.

Opera Mini 5 offer similar functionality. The main difference is that Opera Mini relies on data compression to reduce the amount of work your phone has to do to view a web page. Basically, Opera’s servers pre-load most images and other content, compress it, and then shoot it to your phone to save bandwidth.

The final version of Opera Mini 5 is available for Blackberry and Java-based phones. The browser is also available for Windows Mobile and Android, but both of these recently launched versions are still in beta.

You can install Opera Mobile 10 or Opera Mini 5 on most phones by visiting m.opera.com in a mobile browser.

Opera has released a public beta of Opera Mini 5 for Windows Mobile. Up until now, you had two choices for running an Opera browser on a Windows Mobile phone or PDA: You could purchase Opera Mobile (or use a public beta) or use the Java-based version of Opera Mini. The new software runs natively, no Java required.

Opera Mini 5 beta 2 supports devices running Windows Mobile 5 and 6. Like the Java based version of Opera Mobile, the native app supports tabbed browsing, bookmarks, a password, manager, and Opera Speed Dial — a feature that lets you tap thumbnail icons with shortcuts to your most frequently visited web sites.

One of the things that makes Opera Mini different from most mobile web browsers is the fact that you don’t need a speedy processor in order to experience fast page load times. That’s because Opera uses server-side data compression. In other words, when you enter a URL, the information is sent to Opera, they process the page remotely and send you a compressed version that opens up on your mobile browser. It sounds like it would be slow, but it’s actually faster than trying to load some full web sites using a relatively slow phone.

You can download Opera Mini 5 beta 2 by visiting m.opera.com/next from your device, or by downloading the desktop installer from Opera.com.