Truphone Review
Truphone Overview
Truphone is a mobile operator for the internet era. Truphone provides service over a third-party WiFi (Wireless Internet) connection that you connect to using your Nokia cellphone. That means free mobile calls to other Truphone users or very cheap calls to anyone else. Truphone can offer these free calls to other Truphone users and low rates to others because Truphone does not use your cellular providers network to send or receive calls, it uses your home, business or public hotspot WiFi connection to route calls over the internet.
| Basic Info | Service Provider Answers |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | London, UK |
| Year Established | 2006 |
| Call Type(s) | Voice over WiFi |
| Compatible Phones | Nokia E51, E61i, E65, E90, N95, E60, E61, E70, N80ie, N80, N81, N82, N95 |
| Availability | Truphone service can be used anywhere a WiFi network connection is available |
| Free Calls | With Truphone you can make free WiFi to WiFi calls |
| Phone Number | Truphone users in the UK and US will get Truphone numbers appropriate to their countries (i.e. +44 and +1 respectively). |
| Calling Rates | Truphone offers low cost flat rate calling to every country in the world |
| SMS | Truphone charges 10p/20c per SMS sent to any country worldwide |
| Instant Messaging | No instant messaging capabilities are available |
| Special Features | With Truphone there is no charge for inbound calls and you can get your voicemails sent to email |
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March 31st, 2008 at 6:26 am
Truphone just works!
Excellent voice quality too. Unlike some of the other WiFi based VoIP offerings it does not seem to eat batteries!
April 6th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Used this to keep in touch with Canada while in Mexico City. When in hotel wifi hotspot, service connected easily and voice quality was excellent. Excellent and easy-to-retrieve voice mail service included. Would recommend as a native application for Nokia N and E series smartphones.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
i need to use my N series mobile phone connect with voip softwitch
April 13th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Truphone is the one mobile VoIP ofering that *just works*! I use it with my Nokia E51 and have configured it to recognise the WPA2 protected WiFi Access points at home and in my office. The E51 automatically registers with Truphone as I walk in through the door - and all my calls (and SMS) are routed over Truphone.
I am seriously considering converting from a Vodafone monthly post paid account to a pre-paid PAYG as my monthly GSM traffic no longer warrants being on an expensive monthly tariff!
April 24th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Use truphone everywhere! converted my family as well as my companies employees to use only truphone. Our voice quality has gone up, quite reliable (I tested most services) but truphone had the best quality, missing IM integration into the client as well as call outside of WiFi via truphone, SMS over IP is a great service and works globally on tru, customer service outstanding, price very low as truphone to truphone FREE globally.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
No very easy to use, some features are still missing.
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:08 am
using truphone on my iphone 3g. ALL calls, even to the truphone test number have problems with voice cutting in and out. conversations cut off in both directions. emails to truphone take days for response. i’m sure it truphone would be awesome if it worked.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:04 am
I tried out Truphone today on my iPhone 3G. A friend said that it sounded like I was sitting a few feet from the phone. I also tried it when making a call to a CSR at a company. The conversation was tough because of the voice cutting out.
I’ve had Vonage VOIP in the past and did not run into issues like this. I would love to use Truphone since my phone signal is pretty low at my house, but if you can’t carry on a conversation then what’s the point.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:16 am
good
October 19th, 2008 at 9:59 am
its really nice, but it would be nice also if i can connect without going through a wifi, maybe through g3 with my iphone, because it is really annoying to search for a wifi location to call someone
October 27th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
The billing system has been unreliable and defaults to penalizing the customer and not Truphone.
I kept a manual log of all of my call times vs. Truphones billing system and discovered that even with rounding calls up to the next minute they still go further and overbill you approximately 40%.
Their customer service is slow and often takes many days to respond to your service issue and there response shows a total lack of background efort on their part.
very poor service company.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 am
Very good but customer service is very poor & slow
December 7th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I use my iPhone 3G with this service and it’s excellent. Of course you need to jailbreak your iPhone and use the Voip over 3G hack so you can use 3g data rather than Wifi. I call all over the world using my 3g data plan and truphone. It’s a combination made in heaven.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:05 am
always get severe lag and echo on all calls which makes the system almost unusable. Very poor
April 11th, 2009 at 7:07 am
This is one of the worst companies I’ve had to deal with. I signed up for their “unlimited” plan, and used it for a grand total of about 2 hours of talking over 4 days. At that point I got a text message saying I was kicked out of the unlimited plan due to the “Fair Use policy of private, personal and not-for-commercial use”.
Without any further explanation from them, or credit to my account for the money they promptly charged when I signed up, I contacted them to see what was going on, and was told they had to suspend enveryone from their unlimited plan until further notice because of some suspicious activities from some users.
I don’t have my money, I don’t have the service I paid for, and not even call credit to use with the standard plan for the amount they charged my credit card.
Stay away… and don’t even think about signing up for their “unlimited” plans, it’s a scam.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Great service, except…. when you can’t use it anyone. I upgraded my phone, waited a month or so for Truphone to release the version for my phone but no sign of it. So I requested a refund for the service I can’t use. And set up another Voip service. Turns out no refunds - as per their terms and conditions. Truphone suggested I use my old phone… err, I don’t have it any more and anyway switching the sim is a pain. So I recommend, give them tiny amounts of credit on your account if you use them, in case you need to stop using them as they won’t give it back.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Poor service, poor quality - would not recommend.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Quite terrible. Audio cutting off frequently, bad sound, customer service pathetic. Stay away from this one.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:19 am
FRAUD ALERT! Truphone website claims a 5.1 cent/minute rate for US “landlines/mobiles” Downloaded the app to my Blackberry and called UK cell phone. The real rate is 25 cents a minute! There ought to be a law (company confirms that rate is 25 cents a minute but has not responded to questions about why they list a rate a fraction of this.
January 31st, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I just downloaded an app on my ipod touch and tried to use TruUnlimit Plan. The payment method is terrible. You have to select auto top-up in order to add the plan. Since leaving credit card information on this kind of website has serious security risk ($150 lesson learned from experience with Skype), this is really inconvenient.
The phone quality is OK, but not very reliable. I experienced disconnections from time to time. The worst was that have to redial 5 times in 5 min talk.
I only use it for less than hour, but not very impressed so far.
February 19th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Just got it for my BB, works great for cheap unlimited international calling to landlines. Although the prices are fair the billing system is kind of off, and they don’t let you have an unlimited plan without agreed to a min balance on you account. Costumer service is also very poor. The quality of the calls and price though make up for these issues…
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:40 am
Elizabeth, Truphones website states that calls to a UK mobile phone cost 25 cents per minute. And that is what you say you did. A call to a mobile phone in the UK.
You did not make a call to a mobile phone in the US which should have cost you 5 cents per minute. Probably, as that is what they say they charge for a call to a US mobile as they have charged you on your call to that UK Mobile phone exactly what they listed.
I think it will be fair enough to update or delete your socalled fraud alert. Or that the MobileVoIpReview moderators look into Elizabeth’s review as it looks rather clumsy to show a review which states the mistake.
Anyway, Truphone seems to be working fine with me on my Nokia N95 8GB. Everybody seems to be asking for a bb ping number instead of an phonenumber nowadays, I’m going to ask everybody for their Truphone number. So we cannot text for free but call for free.
April 29th, 2010 at 3:26 am
Don’t be tempted to buy a Trufone SIM card if you’re travelling to the USA. I went through £30 worth of credit in just 10 calls back to the UK and, to top it all, a replacement SIM (original was faulty) was sent to my UK address, not the USA address as requested! Tip - head to Walmart or Target, buy a $10 Tracphone with the “double minutes” offer and top up with $20. It costs the same per-minute to call the UK as it does a US number.
June 2nd, 2010 at 5:46 am
Trying to use from Paris to San Francisco, won’t call, called but dropped, static, all in all a waste.
June 8th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Bought a combined US & UK sim in the UK. Just got to the US, it doesnt work, the UK number still comes up in the US which renders it useless. Customer services has been terrible, the fault has not even been noted after 4 calls. Its rubbish, doesnt work, stay away.
June 18th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Using both the VOPI and the sim card anywhere. Both awful and the customer service is nothing to write home about. The cost of a call to a cell in Nigeria is about 30 cents on the VOIP and 40 on the sim card. Luckily got a Google voice on my phones that charge 14 cents for the same call. I see Truphone being out of business very soon.
July 7th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
I used this service long before any other voip service on my mobile phone. Around 2007 the service was completely free and who cared about quality or connection problems for a free service?
Then they started to charge a little and still I was satisfied about the relative ease of use. The only thing was that the app was kinda dominant on my phone and I could not get other voip options to work when truphone was running. And…. the other options were much cheaper…..
I could set up betamax accounts with great ease and I started to dislike truphone and it’s way to expensive prices.
I now still have some money hanging around on some account of mine with this provider. But I do not even bother to use it because truphone is so extremely expansive that I will forget about it.
July 13th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Truphone has really gone downhill since its humble beginings. I joined Truphone at inception - when the service was free. It was simple and worked great. Then they started charging - No problem, of course.
I still used the service, and was quite happy with it. Then they started charging a LOT more. This did not make sense anymore. Truphone had now become the MOST expensive VOIP provider on the planet. Then they introduced the TruUnlimited Plan fiasco - expensive, complicated billing, min balance, advance charging, and to top it up, they withdrew the service to same destination only after a couple of days.
Also, they removed the 3G calling on some phones, introduced WiFi only or Non WiFi calling on others - an unnecessarily complicated business model.
The Truphone Anywhere part of the app was initially simple and easy to use, until Truphone purchased Sim4Travel. This is now so complicated, it is almost impossible to understand how it works and what the actually charges are - as it not only depends on what country you are in, but what country you are calling, or what your “Local number” is. Also, it is not available in every country, and is now Sim Card based.
I know Truphone are trying to position themselves as a premium VOIP provider, but research will tell you there is no such niche in the market - Unless you are an Iphone or Ipad user - a market Truphone has been heavily focusing on for the past 3-4yrs. This strategy is no surprise, as Truphone is very much like Apple - Much style over very little substance!. There are far cheaper alternatives to Truphone - Yes, they do not have slick software, but they work well, and they are much cheaper.
Another gripe i have with Truphone is that they will NOT give you your SIP password, so you cannot create a SIP profile(Nokia) with your Truphone details on your phone! I have 2 accounts with Truphone and have not used them in over 4yrs!