Old iPhone as home/voIP phone?

[hallaisen]

Hey,

I have a 1gen iPhone as well as a 3g one. I have been lending my 1gen one to a buddy, but recently got it back as he upgraded to 3GS. Part of the reason why he wanted a new one was that the 1gen iPhone is very random in the way that sometimes if you call it it will put you straight through to voicemail, sometimes it will not ring, sometimes it will not notify you of new texts and the volume is quite low for notifications.

Anyway, all that aside I was thinking about things I can use the old phone for now that it is back to collecting dust, and using it as a home phone came to mind. More specifically, I thought about getting an online number from skype, so I can make and receive international calls cheaper and more easily, but I am not sure whether I would be available once the phone goes in sleep mode? I guess a solution for this would be to turn off sleep mode if this is possible in settings, and always keep it plugged into a charger?

Does that seem like a good solution to you guys, or is there a better way for me to achieve what I want? As noted earlier, I would love to find a use for it and I would also love to get a better price and more availability when it comes to international calls. Any opinions?

Also, will the problems regarding calls not going through etc in all likelihood continue even though all the calling/signalling would be done over wifi?

Cheers.

Edit: Thought of another potential problem. I like to be on Skype on my MBP, and would want the iPhone to exclusively be used for calls. I.e I'd like to only be available for chatting on my laptop, and not on my iPhone. Id want to use the phone exclusively for calling. Is that even possible?

 

[hallaisen]

Ok, so I have been researching a bit and found a viable solution:

I can keep my iphone constantly plugged into a charger, and turn off autolock and autobrightness mode, and keep skype constantly logged in (I wonder how long it can be unplugged for with those settings until the battery dies). I can then create a dedicated skype account for the 1gen iphone to be used as voip phone and not add any skype friends there - only normal phone numbers. Furthermore I can buy a worldwide skype subscription allowing me to call home to Norway, to my sister in the UK, my brother in France and my gf to call home to Canada from where we live in Australia! This subscription comes to $12.95 per month and even allows my gf to call canadian mobiles for free.

Now, this seems good to me, but I'm still not sure if the skype-in/out number will work on the iphone skype app? And I am still not sure how the sound quality will be! It seems like quite a good solution though, so now I just gotta find out more about the skype in/out subscriptions!

Anyone have any tips or comments, please let me hear it!

 

[Stampyhead]

Hmmm, sounds interesting. Since it's your second phone it sounds like you don't have anything to lose in trying it. Let us know how it goes! I'm intrigued by this, as I recently moved overseas and family and friends are all international calls.
It's too bad Trufone doesn't have 'call in' numbers like Skype does. Their sound quality is much better than Skype's.