CounterPath (News - Alert) and Vonage updated their respective voice soft clients last week. CounterPath released an Android tablet edition, while Vonage Mobile rolled in two features that suggest a similarity to Metaswitch's Thrutu over-the-top client.
With Android (News - Alert) pulling 39 percent of the consumer tablet market in the last quarter of 2011, CounterPath seems to have good timing to officially introduce its first Bria Android Tablet Edition. It had previously introduced Bria for Android Phones, as well as the Apple (News - Alert) iThings (iPhone, iPad) family, Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.
Bria Android Tablet Edition 1.0 lets users make and receive HD voice (G.722) calls over a Wi-Fi or 3G/4G mobile data connection. It also seamlessly integrates with cloud/hosted and premises-based IP-PBXes and the whole family of CounterPath Bria desktop and mobile clients. The app is certified to work on the Asus Transformer Prime, HTC Flyer, Huawei MediaPad, Motorola (News - Alert) Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tabs 8.9 and 10.1 and the Sony Tablet S.
Android tablet users get the same features as any IP PBX-based desktop phone, including four-digit extension dialing, company voice mail, call transfers and audio conferencing. There's also support for moving calls between desktop and mobile softphones using CounterPath's Network Convergence (News - Alert) Gateway (NCG).
A "forthcoming" release later this year will add support for video calls, SMS, instant messages and presence.
CounterPath is making Bria Android Tablet available in the Google Play story and at its online store. The company can/will also develop customized white-label versions of the app for carrriers, OEMs and enterprise customers.
Vonage Mobile, first released back in February for the iPhone and Android, has now added support for sharing photos and location directly from the app. It's an interesting addition, since I first saw the idea/concept of those two features on Metaswitch's Thrutu a couple of years ago.
The latest edition of Vonage mobile leverages the IP app-to-app concept to allow two parties to swap photos and locations via a button push, as well as provide the usual on-net free calling/low-cost international calling features, standard these days for most service provider provided apps.
What will be interesting is if CounterPath and other soft client manufacturers start incorporating such quick-share features first demonstrated by Thrutu into their own clients, letting users – consumers and businesses – single click or drag a file or document to another user while on a phone call.
For the enterprise crowd, one-click sharing of a PowerPoint file for a briefing is a no brainer, especially during a multi-party conference call. On the consumer side, being able to share/deliver directions to your location almost demands to be put on a mandatory features list in a future list.