VOIP

I'd love to see this feature request include all major non-proprietary protocols (SIP, XMPP) as well as an API (or similar) to integrate popular proprietary protocols (e.g. Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, appear.in, ...). Apart from voice calls it should also support video calls. (I'm not sure whether integrating messaging would also make sense.)

It makes logical sense to me to have communications linked to contacts. https://www.dropbox.com/s/c54jk19ztqd1m1p/Carte%20Blanche.odp?dl=0

badly missing a voice or video call app. perhaps "ring" which i believe is open source. one of the developers told me that it may well be running on the ubuntu phone.

Some thoughts on unified communication (presence, messaging, voice and video calls) on the mailing list: https://lists.launchpad.net/ubuntu-phone/msg21701.html

Some more thoughts about SIP/VoIP integration in the dialer:
- https://lists.launchpad.net/ubuntu-phone/msg16377.html
- http://askubuntu.com/questions/262802/sip-client-in-ubuntu-touch

Is there anything moving in this direction?
Is there any work that UX can do or has done already?

As pointed out in one of the links above this feature could be a real differentiator. Why this is not present on iOS and Android is logical: The feature would collide with the interests of carriers offering such phones. Ubuntu Touch should be different: We should put the interest of users first. Carriers could focus on selling decent data plans, and still make good money.

Added an Ubuntu-UX task and assigned to mpt so he can provide information on the topic, if any.

I appreciate your effort Peter, hold tight! :)

For everyone who missed the answer from Tiago Herrmann from 26-Oct-2015: (Launchpad doesn't show that as a related answer for the above question for some reason)
- https://lists.launchpad.net/ubuntu-phone/msg16471.html

I believe taking this to UX to have them convert this to a user scenario would be good. The dialer could support other protocols/providers just like different SIM cards today. Turning all this into a pleasant unified communication UI is the real challenge, though.

As it stands today, we have a dialer, a phone book, a text messaging app, all not nicely integrated at all. Instead of catching up with iOS and Android Ubuntu Touch should provide a holistic, non-app approach to this problem. No apps, instead an slick API for plugging-in into the platform for both proprietary and non-proprietary protocols and providers.

Hello, Peter, that is an very interesting concept, that I would like to see become real. UC on an UT device would form the next difference to the mainstream. Thanks for your proposal. Wish I was a programmer.

I've taken the idea a bit further and created bug 1627747 ("generic API for communication and data exchange"). This way VoIP (SIP/XMPP) would only be a plugin implementation.

Please cast your vote there too if you love the idea!