One of the interesting things about VOIP is that in addition to using a dedicated piece of hardware as a phone such as a cellphone or handset, you can also make use of a softphone. More specifically it's called a VOIP softphone. This is simply a piece of software that can be installed on your computer (desktop or laptop), pda, smartphone or other internet connected device. This software then takes advantage of the hardware on that device such as a microphone and speakers to substitute for the parts of the handset of a traditional phone. Why would you install a voip softphone on a smartphone? Well, let's say you have a smartphone that also supports wireless internet connections, so when you have an open access point available you may choose to use your voip softphone instead of using the wireless providers network. That would make your phone calls free and not run up per minute charges from your wireless carrier.
There are many different voip softphones available and many are free. They are available now for many operating systems to support handheld smart phones and computers of various kinds including Windows, Mac and Linux based computers. Below is a summary:
Ekiga Smartphone - this is the client I use and have had no problems with on linux. It is freely available and open source. Linux and Windows.
SJPhone is a freely available voip softphone for Linux, Windows and Mac. WindowsCE, PocketPC (Makers of MagicJack).
Twinkle is a very popular open source voip softphone for Linux only.
Opensoftphone - lacks many features - appears designed more for callcenter use when using an asterisk server backend. Java based - Windows and Linux
linphone - Linux based softphone. Also runs on Windows XP - open source.
Kphone - Linux only. Open Source
X-Lite - Windows, Mac, Linux - free download - other versions available.
Gizmo - Windows, Mac, Linux versions available.
This is just a sampling and there are many other voip softphones available. Many are free, there are pay versions as well. I haven't even madea n attempt at addressing softphones that may be available for platforms such as Android or Apple's iPhone or other internet capable devices that also have microphone, and speakers. A VOIP Softphone is really the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to test the waters of Voice over IP.
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