(Before It's News)
In today’s day and age of web-connected smartphones, apps rule the roost. Communicating with the world via your 3G or Wi-Fi Connection, there are apps that let you replicate the functions of your GSM Service Provider. For instance, Whatsapp is an application for smartphones that replicates the SMS functionality that your service provider offers. Similarly, we are trying out an app called PlingM, that replicates the Voice Calling functionality, by routing calls through 3G and WiFi.
However, this idea isn’t unique, as there are literally dozens of other calling apps that let you do the same, as you can see below.
Here is what is supposed to set PlingM apart from the rest:
- Super HD: Crystal Clear Sound
- Free calls between PlingM Users, whatever be the location
- Facebook-Calling that lets you directly connect with Facebook friends without needing a phone number
- Plingm-Out: Low Cost calling to mobile and landlines around the world.
- Linked-In Calling to your LinkedIn contacts directly
- Texting De-Luxe: A ‘Coming Soon‘ feature that wants you to talk in more than letters and numbers
Our Experience
The Android App installed okay. It sends you an SMS confirming your number. You can call other users of PlingM, or call normal landline and Mobile Numbers. They give you a promotional 5 minutes to call anyone, anywhere in the world.
There is a tab called Favourites which shows other users you know who use PlingM. Sadly, out of our hundreds of contacts, exactly four had PlingM. Out of these four, two were people like me, who were just testing the app. On a competing service called Viber, over fifty of my contacts use it, making it a much better proposition.
The calling interface is similar to that of the regular Phone interface. Quality was acceptable. The other end could hear us, but not too clearly.
However, when we called a land line connection and tested voice clarity, we could make out a distinct lag in voice between the two connections that was disturbing.
Call Clarity Issues
We spoke to other users of PlingM via 3G and Wi-Fi connections, and were not very impressed. For a service that claims to offer HD Voice Calling, the quality was sub par. We also called landline numbers in India. It takes extraordinarily long to connect to the number, a good 15-20 seconds. There too quality was just average. We have had much better quality calls over Skype and Viber on the same connection.
On further exploration, this issue was not just experienced by us. If you look at their User Reviews in the Google Play Store, a large number of 1 Star Reviews were found:
The 1 Star reviews had one thing in common: a lot of people not happy with Voice Clarity.
Cost
Similar to Skype, PlingM has a feature called PlingM Out, that lets you call any landline or mobile number around the world. Here are their costs. They are divided into different tiers. The ones that are of interest to us are:
- $3.99 for 100 Minutes aka Rs. 2/min: Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, USA
- $10.99 for 100 minutes aka Rs. 5.5/min: UK, Pakistan, Egypt, France, Russia, Spain and others
If you compare these costs to calling these countries from your regular telephone, the cost savings are significant. However, the competition too offers rates just as good as these, if not better. Nevertheless, the app is worth a try. You can download PlingM on your Android device
here or on your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
here. Do let us know what you think about it in the comments below.
Rating: 2.5/ 5
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