Last night we tested a new service from Qik.com that allows a Nokia cell phone to stream live video. I watched Robert Scoble stream from CES and was impressed with the video quality so we installed the application on the N95 and in a matter of minutes we were streaming live over a wifi connection.

Several users randomly visited our stream while it was live and as they posted messages in our Qik page chatbox, the message was displayed on our camera stream. This is a thoughtful and incredible feature as the person filming can be responsive to the audience. One person asked us to “move left” so we moved left and verbally responded to messages displayed on the screen.

Video quality was surprisingly good and certainly seemed on par with a lot of the lifecasters broadcasting on the Internet. The N95 has a great 5 megapixel camera so the limitation is in the bandwidth to get the video to Qik servers.

An application like Qik just re-enforces the value of an open platform like Symbian on the N95. It seems like once a month there is a new application or feature that increases the value proposition of owning this phone.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Tech Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.