Google Talk Voice/Video Calls?

[DataPath]

I have the North American SGP 4 (YP-G1/XAA), and I noticed that it suffers an abysmal deficiency: the packaged Google Talk (the chat app, not the SMS/Telephony app) lacks voice/video chat capabilities that I've seen other people with actual Android *phones* using.

Why don't I have that? I want it. Give it to me now!

I've read instructions for installing a couple .apks, and copying a .so file into the right location, but the instructions say that they're for Android 2.3.4, and I'm a little leery of messing with it myself if I don't know whether it will screw up my device.

So maybe someone a little more enterprising than I could give it a shot and let me know what they find out?

[CrowdAds]

[skwatch]

There are a number of apps on the market that do this. I have used Google+ and it works, though the UI could be better. There are a lot of them that I haven't tried. I don't use mobile video chatting much so I haven't tried them, but there is also Tango, Skype, Fring, Qik, and others. The Android market has a lot of options and doesn't require you to deal with .APKs directly. Although sideloading an .apk is really a lot easier than you probably think.

[DataPath]

Originally Posted by skwatch

There are a number of apps on the market that do this. I have used Google+ and it works, though the UI could be better. There are a lot of them that I haven't tried. I don't use mobile video chatting much so I haven't tried them, but there is also Tango, Skype, Fring, Qik, and others. The Android market has a lot of options and doesn't require you to deal with .APKs directly. Although sideloading an .apk is really a lot easier than you probably think.

I'm not asking about apps that do what Google Talk does. I'm talking about making Google Talk do what it's supposed to do.

There are other threads that go into the whole VoIP/telephony thing. That's not what I'm looking for.

[skwatch]

Sorry, I missed your point. I looked around a little and it seems a lot of devices, especially Samsung, have a version of Google Talk that does not support Video Chat. Since it is a system app and cannot be updated through the market, it indeed appears you need root to install a version of Talk that may enable this. So it does seem you have to decide if you want to take the rooting plunge, or settle for one of the other video chat apps.

[iJimaniac]

Hey, sorry for such a late reply, but how exactly do you do that with google+? There is no hangout option for me!

[skwatch]

The hangout option is a little hard to find. The discussion wandered to hangouts in some detail on the string titled "VTOk"

To find the hangout button:

"Open google + then select "messenger", then select the icon that looks like a speech bubble(top right of screen). Your google+ "friends" should show up in the list, tap a name. You should then see a video camera icon at the top of the screen. Tap that and you should have your end of the video chat running. Yeah it should be simpler than that to start, but it seems to work well. Another nice feature its that once the chat its running, you can swap back and forth between front and rear cameras to show either you or the scene in front of you. "

[skwatch]

Google+ update is out and Hangouts are much more straight forward to start. Almost makes sense now.