Turn Your Ipod touch Into an Iphone



The iPhone and iPod touch are almost indistinguishable devices except for one major difference—you can make calls from your iPhone, and you can't from your iPod touch. For the privilege of making phone calls with your iPhone, you have to pay $100 more upfront to Apple for the device itself, plus a minimum of $60/month to AT&T for the next two years. Let's say you didn't need that kind of firepower from your iPod touch, but that you would like to use it make a phone call every now and then. You can, and today I'm going to show you how to make VoIP phone calls from your iPod touch or iPhone using a freeware application called SIP-VoIP.

What You'll Need

1.) A jailbroken iPod touch or Iphone. If you haven't already jailbroken your device, don't worry—it'll just take 45 seconds.

How to Jailbreak an ipod Touch or iPhone



2.) iPhone headphones with mics don't work with the iPod touch, so if you're using an iPod touch you'll need a Touchmod mic (touchmods.net microphone ordering). The Touchmod mics come in a variety of flavors, from the simple dongle that plugs into the syncing port to the headphone-and-mic combo that works much like the iPhone headphones. The hardware will set you back somewhere between $50 and $60.



3.) The freeware SIP-VoIP application (Previous SIP-VoIP Releases touchmods.net Weblog). Read on for details for installing SIP-VoIP below.

Install SIP-VoIP

Assuming you've got the hardware you need and you've prepared your device, now it's time to install the VoIP application. If you don't yet have a mic, you can test that SIP-VoIP is successfully making calls before you purchase it.

I'm going to cover two different ways of installing SIP-VoIP. The first and easiest method is with Installer.app, the program that is automatically installed when you jailbreak your iPod. The second method is more difficult, but it's good to have around in case you run into errors (which I did).

Method 1 - Install SIP-VoIP with Installer.app: First, since SIP-VoIP isn't found in Installer.app by default, you need to add the Touchmods repository to Installer. To do so, launch Installer and head to the Sources tab. Now tap Edit -> Add, and type http://touchmods.net/rep.xml into the Add Source dialog. Hit OK, and Installer will refresh your sources, this time including your new Touchmods repository.



Now go to the Install tab and find the entry labeled Touchmods. Inside you'll see an app called Touchmods SIP-VoIP. Go ahead and install SIP-VoIP by tapping the entry, tapping the install button, and then verifying that you want to install this application from an "untrusted" source.



This is by far the easiest method for installing SIP-VoIP, but I had trouble with the latest version of SIP-VoIP (version 1.2) on my iPod touch, so I had to install a previous version (1.1). Since you can only install the latest with Installer, I'll also demonstrate how to install older versions of SIP-VoIP. I'd recommend trying it the easy way first, then moving to the following method if you have trouble. If you're taking the easy route the first time around, skip to the Set Up an SIP Account section below.

Method 2 - Install SIP-VoIP over SSH: To install previous versions of SIP-VoIP, you'll need to first install OpenSSH through Installer.app (you can find it under Install -> System). Now you'll need to connect to your iPod using a desktop FTP client that supports SFTP connections (like FileZilla for Windows or Cyberduck for OS X). This will allow you to browse and copy files to your iPod like you would if you could access the disk as an external hard drive on your computer.

To connect to your device from your computer, you'll need to know your iPod touch's or iPhone's IP address. You can find this by opening the Settings app, tapping Wi-Fi, and then tapping the blue arrow next to the network you're connected to.



Now that you've got that, start up your FTP client of choice, enter the IP address as you server, and use root for your username and alpine as your password. Once connected, navigate to the Applications folder (just above the root folder). That's where your iPhone and iPod touch keep all of their applications. From here it's a simple matter of dragging and dropping the appropriate SIP-VoIP app to the applications folder.



For this article, I'm using the 1.1 version of SIP-VoIP, which you can download here. Once downloaded, unzip the file and then drag and drop the SIP-VoIP.app file to your Applications folder. Finally, restart your iPod or iPhone and the new app should show up on your home screen.

Set Up an SIP Account



Unfortunately the SIP-VoIP app doesn't work with the most popular VoIP app Skype (it uses the SIP protocol), which means you'll have to set up an account with another service to use the app. Luckily there are tons of options out there that can work with SIP-VoIP. I used a service called FreeCall, so that's what I'll highlight in my examples, but the Touchmods blog lists a handful of alternatives.

If you want to follow along exactly with my settings, head to the FreeCall signup page (Call Free | Free Calls!) and register for an account. After you register, you'll need to buy some minutes for your call time. FreeCall is an international service, so when it asks for your cell phone (to which it sends an SMS confirmation), you'll need to include your country code; for example, it would look something like 0015555551234 if you're in the US. The minimum purchase with FreeCall is 10 euros, which amounts to around $16. Once you've purchased some calling time with FreeCall, it's time to enter your setup configuration in SIP-VoIP and start making calls.

NOTE: If you don't want to spend money off the bat, you might want to try signing up with a service like Gizmo5 (formerly Gizmo Project), which offers a small amount of trial credit.

Set Up SIP-VoIP to Make Calls

Finally, we're ready to set up SIP-VoIP with the SIP provider you registered with above. Launch the app from your iPod touch or iPhone's home screen, then tap on Settings in the bottom right corner. You'll see a very rudimentary form where you'll enter the settings for the SIP account you set up above.



If you used FreeCall like I did, enter your FreeCall username and password in the first two fields (other services will use the number they've assigned you as the username), then sip.voiparound.com in the field labeled SIP-Server (see screenshot). There are more fields, but for FreeCall that should be all you need. Hit Save to save your settings—you may have to hit return on the iPod's keyboard to dismiss it and see the Save button—and then tap the dial tab to head to the dialpad.



Before you make your first call, you have to connect the application to the SIP server, so click the button labeled "connect to sip server" in the lower left. If all goes well, it'll connect without a hitch. (This is where I ran into some problems with version 1.2 on the iPod touch. 1.2 connected without issue from my iPhone, but I kept getting connection error messages with 1.2 on my iPod touch. If you're having similar problems, installing version 1.1 may help.) If it connected successfully, all you've got to do is dial your number (country code included, depending on which service you go with) and hit the call button.

I actually stumbled onto a video on YouTube of a precocious kid using a Touchmods mic with SIP-VoIP and FreeCall. There are several of these videos on YouTube—I particularly like this speaker phone setup


Check out his video below to get a better look at what the final result is.

As said before, this is not me.

Set up Inbound number

Your FreeCall account only handles outbound calls, but you're not out of luck if you want to add inbound functionality to your iPod touch. You can register your FreeCall SIP account with other services, like IPKall, to get a free phone number that will ring your iPod touch. (The only catch is that you're limited to a state of Washington area code).
The SIP-VoIP app has been in development for a while, and though it's still not much to look at, it seems to be improving over time. The iPhone and iPod touch 2.0 firmware will officially hit the streets sometime in June with support for third party apps through Apple, so who knows what kind of VoIP apps we'll see when that time comes.

Whether or not we'll ever see Skype or another VoIP app officially supported for the iPhone (Apple says they'll allow VoIP over Wi-Fi), SIP-VoIP is already there. My experience with it has been hit-or-miss, and it's got miles to go before it's the friendliest app around, but whether you'd like to make international calls for cheap or you just want to want to reach out and touch someone from your iPod touch, the folks at Touchmods and SIP-VoIP are already providing the tools to do just that.

No, you don't get visual voicemail, text messaging, or a built-in camera, but you do get to make and receive phone calls from your iPod touch—which in itself shows a lot of promise.

The 20 Best iPhone and ipod Touch Applications



Apps that Cover Rumored 1.1.3 Features

First let's tackle the hot apps of the moment—those apps that can already bring you the features rumored to be in the 1.1.3 update. The major new features appear to be the faux-GPS in Google Maps, multi-recipient SMS, and re-ordering apps on the home screen. Two of the apps above have been covering those features for quite some time (Navizon for GPS and Customize for re-ordering apps), and the third, iSMS for multi-recipient SMS, is a bit newer, but in addition to multi-recipient SMS, it offers quick-reply templates, emoticons, and a much more robust SMS management system. It does not currently offer MMS messaging, though there is an iPhone app (called SwirlyMMS) that is attempting the MMS road, though it's still a bit bumpy. MMS messages can be sent (though it requires a bit of setup), but so far not received.

iSMS


iSMS tackles multiple recipients, it provides a robust email-like interface from which you can selectively delete individual messages, it can search your inbox, supports emoticons, and includes templates like "I am late, I will be there at..." so even if you aren't a whiz with the iPhone keyboard you can fire off texts in no time.

Navizon GPS


Navizon attempts to pinpoint your location (with impressive accuracy, I might add) using cell tower triangulation. It doesn't work in all areas, but I'd venture to guess that the same is true of the upcoming Google Maps feature.

Customize


Customization nuts will go ga-ga for Customize, which allows you to change everything from system sounds to nearly every image and message your iPhone displays.

On a more practical note, this is the best application for simple re-ordering of your home screen apps.

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The only major new feature that's been discovered in the 1.1.3 update that isn't easily available through Installer is the new web clip feature that allows the user to bookmark a web page directly on the home screen. There are hacks around that accomplish this, but they're not the kind of no-brainer installations as the above three apps. The WebSearch app described below, however, is arguably a good deal more useful for what I need than the web clips, so I can happily do without for the time being.

Now that I've covered the 1.1.3 features (I'll include these apps in the sections below by category as well), lets move on to my 20 favorite iPhone apps.

Communication

Below we've got a more robust SMS client, a multi-protocol IM app, and a simple utility that adds push email capabilities to IMAP accounts—including Gmail.

iSMS]


iSMS tackles multiple recipients, it provides a robust email-like interface from which you can selectively delete individual messages, it can search your inbox, supports emoticons, and includes templates like "I am late, I will be there at..." so even if you aren't a whiz with the iPhone keyboard you can fire off texts in no time.

Apollo


Chat is still the marque application that's conspicuously missing from the iPhone... unless you've jailbroken your phone and installed Apollo, that is. It supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, and .Mac, it stays alive so you can receive messages while multi-tasking in other apps, and it's pretty snazzy to boot.

iMapldle


Push email is one of the main features that make devices like BlackBerry's so damn beloved, but unless you're using Yahoo Mail, you don't have push on your iPhone. iMapIdle actually adds push capabilities to your iPhone for Gmail and other IMAP email without taking any significant hit in battery life.

How well does it work? When I turn it on, my iPhone vibrates before my Gmail account is even showing a new message.

Multimedia

The multimedia list is a big one, so I'll just highlight a few. You've got a Last.fm client and scrobbler for your iPod, a feature-rich camera app, and a real-time lyrics app that automagically sucks lyrics for your music from the cloud.

Books


Read eBooks on the go with Books. It's simple but very easy on the eyes, and the library available in Installer is pretty impressive considering the small time it's been around.

MobileScrobbler


Last.fm lovers will go nuts for this one. It streams music, uploads (scrobbles) music you've been listening to on your iPod to your Last.fm account, and does tons more. This is hands down one of the best mobile apps I've ever seen. It's full featured, wonderfully designed, and a really fun to use.
iFlix


iFlix takes home the award for best use of "wow" transition effects available on the iPhone. Apart from that, it's also a really simple and usable way to manage your Netflix queue. Blockbuster users, there's a similar app available via Installer that I have not tried, so you may find some luck there.

Camera Pro


Camera Pro Lite (there's a pay version that I haven't tried) brings digital zoom and different camera effects to your iPhone's camera. Not all of the features are fully implemented yet (the Flickr integration will be very cool, though for the time being an app called iFlickr does the trick nicely), but it's already a very impressive upgrade to the default photo app.

TuneWiki


Lyric lovers and karaoke stars, TuneWiki is the coolest app you can expect to come across on your iPhone. You use it to play back your music, and in doing so it automatically downloads the lyrics for your song and advances the lyrics in real-time with the music.

Productivity

One of my favorites, the WebSearch app adds one-click search to any site, while Sketches is a great whiteboard tool and drawing pad.

Sketches


Okay, so Sketches can be a very fun app, but apart from what you see above, you can also whiteboard ideas on an empty screen or graph paper, save the results to your camera roll, or email what you've got, making it a great quick capture tool for the visual thinker.

Oh, and all Etch-a-Sketch-y, shake it to make your drawings disappear.

WebSearch


You can think of WebSearch as the iPhone equivalent to keyword searches in Firefox. You just tap the site you want to search, enter your query, and WebSearch opens the results in Safari. That means no more opening Safari, loading the page, finding the search box, etc.

You're cutting out the search middle man, and you can add your own searches with relative ease.

Utilities

There are obviously quite a few great iPhone utilities, so to highlight just a few: OpenSSH is what I used to tether my iPhone data plan to my laptop; DropCopy is great for sharing files between your phone or iPod and your desktop; Installer, obviously, is the app that makes all of this third-party app business so easy; Navizon does the faux-GPS for Google Maps; and Customize covers app re-ordering and just about any other customization you'd want to make to your little iPod or iPhone.

OpenSSH


Apart from everything you can do with SSH, the thing I like most about using OpenSSH on my iPhone is that I can use it to use my iPhone's internet connection on my laptop when I'm on the go.

iTrac


This one's relatively new and the design shows it, but if you like to keep an eye on your deliveries and other packages, iTrac offers a nice way to do so.

iPhoneHome


In one of the early updates, Apple added a double-click keyboard shortcut for the home button. By default, the double-click can either open your iPod or your favorite contacts. iPhoneHome lets you assign any application and many commands to that action, be it third-party or not.

iSpit


iSpit offers a really simple way to browse your filesystem and get files off your iPhone by running a small and efficient web server on your phone. It doesn't offer read/write capabilities for adding new files to your phone, but it's really handy for, say, grabbing all your screenshots when you're making a gallery like this one. (I know, it's a problem we've all had.)

DropCopy


DropCopy works with the desktop Mac application, the previously mentioned DropCopy, to provide a dead simple way to transfer files to and from your iPhone or iPod touch. Just run the app on your device and whatever computer you want to communicate with and beaming files back and forth works like a jiffy.

Installer


Installer is the must-have app for your iPhone, if only because it's through Installer that you can easily find and install all of the latest and greatest third-party apps.

Navizon GPS


Navizon attempts to pinpoint your location (with impressive accuracy, I might add) using cell tower triangulation. It doesn't work in all areas, but I'd venture to guess that the same is true of the upcoming Google Maps feature.

Customize


Customization nuts will go ga-ga for Customize, which allows you to change everything from system sounds to nearly every image and message your iPhone displays.

On a more practical note, this is the best application for simple re-ordering of your home screen apps.

Games

There are actually tons of games available on the iPhone at this point, but these three stand out as favorites because of their impressive use of the iPhone's animation engine or for just being plain addictive.

Gallery Name

NES


NES emulators are an obvious must-have, but this one is unlike any you've used before. It supports vertical and widescreen orientation, has onscreen buttons (that are sometimes a bit of a chore), but nonetheless is very fun to play around with, especially with games that aren't particularly controller intensive.

iSolitaire


iSolitaire, just like Solitaire on your PC, is addictive. Unlike Solitaire on your PC, though, iSolitaire looks beautiful, has really nice animations, and uses the iPhone's accelerometer to toss the cards every which way when you win.

HuaRuangDao


Help Cao escape! It's a puzzle, its addictive, and it makes you feel smart when you win. It's a win-win!

Honorable Mention

For honorable mention purposes (I realize I already fudged a bit with 21 above), I wanted to point out FireflyMediaServer, an app that streams your iPod library to any iTunes library on a local network as a shared library. Dictionary is what it sounds like, a dictionary application that can search tons of installable dictionary databases (also available in Installer). Finally, for the students out there, iStudy is a simple flashcard app that also features downloadable content from Installer.

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The obvious argument remains, though, that the 1.1.3 update provides a much better integration of the features listed in the 1.1.3, and that's valid. Keep in mind, though, that you also sacrifice the wealth of great third-party apps, like push email for your IMAP account, when you upgrade to 1.1.3 before the jailbreak is a reality. That said, kudos to Apple for continuing to innovate the iPhone and iTouch, and I think we're all eager to find out what kind of system they're planning to work out once the SDK is official in February (as well as what other announcements regarding these two devices might pop up at MacWorld).

Got a favorite iPhone or iPod touch app I missed? Let's hear it in the comments.

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Ha, nice thread. I've already got the iPhone, but I'm sure someone here can make use of it.

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very helpful thread, nice work, but im in the same situation as terror, i already hae an iphone as well.

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rat shit cat shit dirty old twat 69 douche bags tied in a knot horrayyyyyyy lizard shit... fuck!

You would need to be connected to the internet for this to actually work, right? Kind of would really defeat the purpose if I wanted to use this as a phone out and about where no internet access is really available. Correct me if I'm wrong (because I really don't know :P)

Yeah, you need to be connected to the wi-fi for this to work.

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AKA: -K155-Bravo

Well this is for the people who don't want to pay an extra $100 and the AT&T fees but don't get me wrong, the iPhone is still better and more reliable for these kind of things. I just added the 20 best iPhone or Ipod Touch applications.

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