Battle of the iOS Video Chat Applications: FaceTime vs. Skype [Video]

We’ve compared a number of the preferred video chat programs on the desktop before , but now that Skype can make video calls on iOS, we took a have a look at both Skype and FaceTime to work out how they measure up.

Music by Rappy McRapperson

Obviously, these tests aren’t scientific, but now that FaceTime has some real competition from the most important name in video chat, we thought we’d do a brief comparison of the two. We know there are other apps available in the market, but since these are by far essentially the most well-known, we’re just covering these for now. For frame of reference, the tests were performed with either an iPhone 4 and an iPod touch 4G or an iPhone 4 and a Hackintosh running OS X with a Logitech Pro 9000 webcam.

Skype

Unlike Skype on the desktop, which has lots of configuration settings that permit you to optimize video for different connections, Skype on iOS is a chat-out-of-the-box affair. It handles video chatting pretty well, though, since it limits the video quality of the outgoing video to keep it from sucking up your bandwidth. The audio quality we experienced was very clear, and while your outgoing video on the iPhone may not be the highest, the incoming video is of higher quality in case your chat partner is on a desktop computer. Quality will probably be slightly lower on each side if it’s iOS-to-iOS. We did notice a little lag in between the video and the audio in addition, though it was nothing unbearable-we still found it to be a pleasurable video chat experience.

Feature-wise, it’s important to note that Skype has an incredible leg up on FaceTime at the time of this writing (January 2011). Not only does it have the capacity to video chat over Wi-Fi and 3G, it’s also cross-platform on the desktop, that means you are able to chat with any of your pals, whether they’ve Windows, OS X, or Linux.

FaceTime

While FaceTime doesn’t come up with as many options as Skype, seeing as it’s iOS and Mac only (and is restricted to Wi-Fi currently), it does still provide an excellent video chat experience. The audio quality was still pretty great, and there was no lag between the video and the audio like there was on Skype. The video quality was somewhat better once you stood still, though in the event you started moving around the framerate would drop (until you stood still again).

Overall, I wouldn’t particularly pick one over the opposite, as they’re both great apps. In the event you put a gun to my head, I’d probably pick FaceTime, if only for the shortage of lag-but the video quality in Skype, while lower, was a little less distracting (to me, at the least). They’re both great apps, and I wouldn’t push any of my friends to exploit one or the alternative while speaking to me. Like I mentioned before, Skype has the distinct benefit of being cross-platform and not being limited to Wi-Fi, so that’s always a significant plus.

Have a selected video chat app for iOS that you just love, whether it’s one of the vital above or something totally different? Let us know which one (and why) inside the comments.

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This post is tagged: computer quality, configuration settings, desktop computer, frame of reference, logitech pro 9000