This App Lets You Call Any Number on the Planet – For Free International & landline numbers too - the recipients do not need the app to be installed! Sounds too good to be true?

You were definitely not wrong when you thought that the advent of VOIP, or internet based calling would make life difficult for traditional calling! Things became more interesting and trickier with the luxury of high speed internet available in virtually every populated part of the world now; often offered for free via WiFi and public hotspots courtesy of generous organizations or well-planned governments.

Telecommunication giants are obviously furious because of this and have repeatedly tried to plug the outreach and power of the internet via diminishing Net Neutrality or just jacking-up their rates phenomenally. So when all telecommunications giants are always trying to screw-over their customers, why are we still paying for calling charges?

Finally, there's a solution that sounds too good to be true – an app that allows you to make calls on any number on the planet – absolutely free! And yes, they do not need the app to be installed, so you can even call internationally as well as landline number. The app is available on Android OS too, but this review is based solely on the iOS.

CallPal has finally bridged the gap with VOIP and regular calling. But does it stand the claim? Here's a completely review:

Key Features

• Absolutely free calling to any number
• Recipients of who you call do not need the app to be installed
• Recipients wills see your registered phone number as the caller ID, so they don't know you're using this app to make a call
• Can call international numbers as well
• Landline numbers can also be called
• No extremely long forms to fill while signing up
• No spam on your actual cell phone
• No inbuilt credits, premiums, coins or other proxy ways to extract money later. It's actually free!
• The app promises to never spam you or fill your inbox with repeated painful reminders to use the app
• Works on the iPhone as well
• Syncs with your contacts to emulate a regular dialing pad

Demerits

I've been testing the app only for a day so far and found several bugs so far. While I am completely supportive of the theory behind the app and what it can potentially achieve, it's disappointing to see a public launch of the app that features so many bugs. Hopefully, future versions will fix these and it would get better. Here are some of them:

• The app crashes every 5 minutes on my iPhone for unexplained reasons. I have to manually restart the app to get going again!
• Call quality is worse than Skype. Every second sentence you utter would be "excuse me?" because you or the recipient cannot hear anything clearly. Keep in mind, my internet is extremely slow and this could entirely be my internet's fault too.
• There's a delay of a few seconds in the call. Not that it affects you phenomenally, but it's easily noticeable. It's like talking through a walkie-talkie and waiting for the other person to reply before talking yourself.
• It has an extremely high internet usage. As compared to other VOIP apps, CallPal will use a huge amount of data from your internet pack. Of course to fund the calls you are bombarded with ads, which is a fair exchange, but the app is changing the ads so fast and using such multimedia rich graphics that it completely drains your internet.
• Even on the iPhone, the app has a noticeable lag in its interface. It just doesn't run as smoothly as it should.

Overall verdict

Even with its visible, disruptive bugs and glitches, I would still recommend you to download and keep the app in your smart phone for a rainy day to make a call when you're out of balance. Unfortunately, it has a long way to go to completely replace traditional calls, but I appreciate the theory and goals behind it and would love to support it.

What's your experience been using CallPal? Let us know in the comments on our official Facebook page BIZ Experiences India