is this service live?

we are currently running an alpha test with a limited number of by invitation-only users. as soon as the service becomes more stable, we’ll give out a limited number of private beta test accounts. if you are interested in being leading-edge and helping us test the service, please sign up to our beta program by providing your phone model, and if you know it, the data rates on your call plan.

how much does this cost?

nothing, it’s free, as in free beer.

please note that your operator may however charge you for packet data traffic charges.

how much data gets transferred?

onesoup is a data transfer service, and as such you will be transferring data from and to your mobile phone. traffic usage depends on a number of factors, mainly the type of phone, your operator’s network, and your actual usage of the service (number of messages, hours of connection).

• nokia, sony-ericsson and siemens’ phones use a wireless binary XML compression format, known as WBXML, and transfer 10 less times data than motorola’s phones.
• the default mode of operation for the onesoup servers is to push messages to the phone. however, in some networks the push mechanisms are not supported and the phone needs to regularly poll the onesoup servers for messages. this poll model unfortunately results in a ten-fold increase in data traffic. the availability of push mechanisms depends on your operator’s network configuration. although we are working to bypass some of these limitations, it’s safe to assume that for now only a low proportion of operators support the push model.

the following table summarizes the expected traffic per month (connecting daily), in Megabytes, under a regular usage pattern (40x SMS-like-length messages per hour).

Daily Usage	XML (Poll)	XML (Push)	WBXML (Poll)	WBXML (Push)
1h	15 MB	3 MB	1.5 MB	0.3 MB
10h	126 MB	14 MB	12 MB	1.4 MB
24h	300 MB	31 MB	30 MB	3.1 MB

so, except for motorola, you are looking into transferring between 3.1 MB and 31 MB for always-on mobile IM. pay-as-you-go or pay-monthly prices per MB are still rather high, and since 31 MB is fully within the accepted allowances of all flat-rate data plans i know of, i highly encourage you to get a flat-rate data plan.

what are the differences between the embedded client available in most phones and the proprietary IM clients i can buy and download into my phone?

among a few, license fees, transfer costs, battery life and usability. to start with, onesoup is free.

in terms of transfer costs, a XMPP/Jabber client on the phone would transfer in excess of 300 MB, unless compression is available as an XMPP extension (not standard). onesoup transfers less data using WBXML.

as for proprietary binary protocols, yahoo and msn are very lightweight, whereas aim/icq is not. they would all be on the 1 to 3 MB range. so in terms of transfer costs, these installable clients are very effective. the downside is that they all require to keep a socket open to the server, which is a guarantee for a short battery life.

usability is also a factor. the embedded client can integrate with all the presence features of your phone (e.g. address book and GPS). this is normally not available for downloadable clients.

this is not to say that the downloadable clients are bad. for some, they are far better than the embedded ones, which sometimes are buggy and with limitations. there are some clients that have been very well designed for mobile, taking into account transfer volumes, battery life, connectionless operations, and integration into the presence and location features on the phone. in some other cases, a particular device might not have an embedded client, in which case there is no option but to download one.

how do i sign up?

onesoup performs auto-registration upon your first connection to the service, so that you don’t have to register. all you need to do is to setup your phone following the instructions provided to connect to the onesoup servers.

are you storing passwords?

we are not storing your IM password (e.g. yahoo, aim, msn, etc.) you will only enter the password in your phone and we don’t keep it in our database.

setup is a bit difficult, can you make it easier?

although we think the setup is fairly easy, it may prove slightly confusing for new users in certain phone models. we are looking into options for auto-configuring phones using Over-the-Air (OTA) push messages. unfortunately, sms aggregator services are still very expensive.

how do i install onesoup?

if you have a Nokia, Motorola Sony-Ericsson, Siemens or BenQ mobile phone less than 3 years old, it is likely it already has IM installed on it. Check it out! In Nokia phones, the IM client is normally called IM or IM/Chat or even My Presence. On Motorola it’s called IM. On Sony-Ericsson it’s called My Friends, and on Siemens and BenQ phones, it’s called Instant Message. all you require to do is to enter the onesoup settings in your phone to get chatting away.

how does this all work?

our servers act as a gateway to the mainstream instant messaging networks. our servers implement the mobile industry standard for the Instant Messaging and Presence Services (IMPS) Client Server Protocol (CSP), also known as Wireless Village, defined by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). the IMPS standard is supported by most mobile manufacturers, and most modern phones ship with an IM application compatible with our servers. we work with the top mobile manufacturers to ensure that phone terminals are compatible with our service, so that “it just works”.

will it work on my phone?

probably. if your phone manufacturer is Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, or Siemens, and your phone is less than 3 years old, it is very likely it includes an IM client that will be compatible with onesoup.

is there a list of supported phones?

yes, please check this.

is the iPhone supported?

apple does not currently ship an IM client on the phone, and it is rather unlikely anyway for apple to ship an IMPS-compatible client. also, based on rumors, it’s likely the iPhone will include at some point in June 2008 an XMPP-based iChat client. since the iPhone sells with unlimited data plans, the use of XMPP should not be a problem in terms of transfer costs.

i am considering developing an application for the iPhone with focus on aggregated presence and location, rather than on the more traditional messaging functionality found in desktop IMs. i actually find the iPhone a very attractive platform as a developer, and i don’t fully share the views expressed by some on the issues related to distribution. my reluctance to write a client so far has come from technical limitations originally imposed by apple upon release of the iPhone SDK, mainly stopping applications from running on the background (let’s face it, IM without notifications is simply not IM). it seems however like the iPhone SDK beta 4 removed some of these terms that i previously found impossible to work against.