I’ve been using Fring before during the 1.x firmware days. It was the first IM client to support Yahoo! Messenger. The functionality is okay but the interface could use a little makeover.

Fast forward several months. Fring is back, but on the Apple AppStore this time. When it comes to functionality and eye-candy, Beejive wins over Fring by a mile lightyear. Excluding the price factor, any normal user would ditch Fring for Beejive.

Fring has an edge over all IM clients.  It supports SIP, including your very own Asterisk.  With Truphone, well, you’re just confined to their service.  It’s no X-Lite but it provides the basic features of a soft phone.

The different SIP providers above are merely templates.  There are only 3 important fields when configuring a subscription: User ID (extension number), Password and Proxy server.  Select Other at the bottom to register to your Asterisk box.

What I like best about Fring is that you can also receive calls, with caller ID.  There’s a nice SIP client before (siphone was the name, I think) but it only allows outgoing calls.

Fring also supports call history and access to your address book.

Now, can you say “unlimited calls” ?