Lumicall: big steps forward, help needed
I've recently made more updates to Lumicall, the free, open source and secure alternative to Viber and Skype.
Here are some of the highlights:
- The dialing popup is now optional, so if you want to call your friends with Lumicall / SIP but they don't want to see the popup when making calls themselves, you can disable the popup on their phone.
- The dialer popup now shows results asynchronously so you can dial more quickly
- SIP SIMPLE messaging is now supported, Lumicall is now taking on WhatsApp
- Various bugs in the preferences/settings have been fixed and adding SIP accounts is now easier
- Dialing with a TURN relay is now much more reliable
- It is now possible to redial SIP calls in the call history without seeing the nasty Android bug / popup telling you that you don't have Internet calling configured
F-Droid not updated yet - resolved!
At the time this blog was originally posted, F-Droid was not yet carrying the latest version of Lumicall. This has now changed, you can get the latest Lumicall through F-Droid again. The F-Droid team may need assistance as they appear to be reviewing a lot of the third-party dependencies used by apps they distribute to make sure the full stack is 100% free software. If people want to continue having the option to get Lumicall and other free software through F-Droid instead of Google Play then helping the F-Droid community is the number one way you can help Lumicall.
Other ways you can help, even without coding
You don't have to be a developer to help with Lumicall.
Taking on Viber, Skype and now WhatsApp as well may not sound easy. It isn't. Your help could make the difference though.
Here are some of the things that need assistance:
- Helping to get it on Wikipedia, they keep deleting the page while happily hosting pages about similar products like Sipdroid and CSipSimple
- Helping get the latest dependencies and Lumicall version into F-Droid
- UI design ideas
- Web site assistance
- Documentation and screenshots, e.g. for use with Asterisk and FreeSWITCH and various SIP proxies
- Translation
- Messaging: to be the default SMS app on an Android device, Lumicall would need a full messaging UI and the ability to replace all functions of the default SMS app. Can anybody identify any other free software that does this and is modular enough to share the relevant code with Lumicall?
- ZRTP: can you help improve the ZRTP stack used by Lumicall?
Try SIP SIMPLE messaging
When composing a message to a Lumicall user, the SIP address is written sip:number @sip5060.net. E.g. if the number is +442071234567 then the SIP address to use when calling or composing a message is sip:+442071234567 @sip5060.net
Debian Developers should be able to interact with Lumicall users from rtc.debian.org using the SIP over WebSocket messaging.
Getting the latest Lumicall
It is available from: