As most of you have probably noticed, the Cherry application is draining your battery very fast. This is because the application keeps a constant Wifi connection open to our servers. As the current beta format does not support incoming calls it is pretty useless to keep this connection open all the time.

That is why we implemented this new Just-In-Time registration feature in our Android client. The point is that you don’t need to be registered to our servers all the time, only when you want to make calls and have a Wifi connection available.

How does it work? Well, Next time you make a call when the Cherry application is not running and you have a valid Wifi connection available you will see the following popup.

When you click the “Call with Cherry” option, the application will start, try to register and make the call.

If the registration process fails or you clicked the “Call on GSM/CDMA” button, the call will not be routed over Wifi and the usual call screen will show up.

Ofcourse you don’t want to be bothered by a popup every time you make a call so we provided a new option in our preferences screen to automate the network selection.

Please note that this setting will only be taken into account when you try to make a call when the Cherry application is not running and a good Wifi connection is available.

Happy calling

Recently we launched phase 2 of our Cherry on Android beta. This time we are opening up our platform to a wider audience. Below are a few quick guidelines for the new Cherry users.

• The application is still in beta. There will be bugs and there will be force closes from time to time. If you ever encounter one of these issues, please log them in our issue tracker so we can fix them.
• When calling someone with our client, make sure you enter their number in international format. This means adding the ‘+’ sign followed by the country code of the destination. (for example US numbers will always start with ‘+1′)
• If you want to max out your calling credit, try calling to fixed lines as much as possible. Calling to fixed lines is a lot cheaper than calling to mobile numbers.
• As you can see, our list of compatible devices is not that large. This is because we don’t have a copy of every available handset out there. If you have a handset that is not on the list, please try the application and give us some feedback about how it works so we can update our database.
• A quick way to test if 2-way audio is working on your handset, is to call to the free number ‘200′ when registered to the servcie. When you call this number an echo will be played back to you. (handovers will not work on this number)

Happy calling

In some cases you don’t want Cherry to pick up calls and route them over Wifi. For example when you want to call the voicemail number of your operator. Flagging a contact as GSM-only is easy:

• Open the Android contacts application and navigate to the contact you want to flag
• Longpress the contact and select “edit contact” from the menu
• Scroll to the bottom and click the + sign next to Notes to add a new note
• Enter “nocherry” without quotes in the field and save your contact

That’s it. From now on Cherry will ignore all calls made to this contact.

For now during the beta you will have to manually add notes to the contacts you don’t want to call on Cherry. In the future we will provide a GUI to do this.

Happy calling.

We have just enabled the first batch of beta VOIP accounts. The affected users will have received an SMS containing the number to use for requesting an access code. For those users that have not yet received an SMS, don’t worry, we are rolling out account in small groups and your account should be enabled in a couple of days.

The following is a quick guide on how to use the Cherry application.

The main screen

Upon verification of your access code you will see the main screen of the Cherry application. This screen holds information about your registration status towards our service and the handover sensitivity slider.

The statusmessage at the bottom of the screen and the Cherry logo in the notification tray show that the user is currently registered on our service and is able to make VOIP calls. The slider in the middle shows that the handover sensitivity setting is set to “not sensitive” which means that the call will only handover from Wifi to GSM when the signal gets really bad. (minor cuts in the voice quality will be tolerated on this setting)

Starting a call

Initiating a call with Cherry is simple. Whenever you are trying to make a call using the standard Android phone interface (contacts, call log, favorites, …) and you are registered to the service, the application will pick up the call and start it on Wifi.

Known issue: on HTC Hero devices with 1.5 firmware, when you try to call someone using the Sense dialer the call will not be picked up as smooth as it does on other devices. The call will start on GSM for about 1second, then gets aborted and reïnitiated on Wifi.

Incall screen

When a wifi call is ongoing, the following callscreen will show

Notice the black bar at the top of the screen? That is your call statusbar. If that bar is black, you are calling on Wifi (on our expense), if that bar is red it means the call is handed over to GSM (billed on your own simcard).

Post-call summary

When a call has ended, the post-call summary screen will show.

This screen gives you a summary of the past call. It will tell you the number you called, the call duration and the total calltime spent on WIFI and GSM.

This screen will also ask you for a rating. You can rate the call quality you experienced from 1 to 5. This rating will be uploaded to our servers along with some device info (like device model, android version and app version) so we can analyze the factors that are causing a bad call experience.

Happy calling!