Few years back people used to send letters and postcards to connect with their friends and family. Soon came the era of landlines and mobile – communicating with friends, talking to them for long became the trend. Long letters turned into short text messages and live text chat. It was all so much fun and comforting to connect with friends.

Text messaging and voice chatting (phone calls) is still liked and used by us in our day to day lives. But what is now getting more and more popular is Video Calls – both on computer and mobile phones. With the advent of smartPhones (a mobile with high speed internet in it, a camera, microphone), making video calls is so very easy.

The joy of video call (seeing the person live, who may be living thousands of miles away) is just awesome. You may be living too far from your mom (may be in another country), but when you do video call with her, that feeling is really very nice as if you are just sitting in same living room having a cup of coffee.

What adds to the joy is that you can video call/chat with your friends and family for as long as you like and that too for free. Yes, as all it requires is high speed internet, camera, microphone (basically a smartphone or laptop/desktop) to make that video call. If you are using unlimited internet plan (or a cheap internet plan), then your actual video call cost is free. The data consumed in a video call is very less and thus the cost is effectively zero.

This article is a complete guide on your video calling needs – be it on SmartPhones or Computer.

How to Make Free Calls using SmartPhone Applications

• If making video calls from Mobile – You need a smartphone which has internet (wifi or 3G) and front facing camera.
• If making video calls from computer – You need a laptop/desktop with webcam and microphone. Offcourse you need internet connectivity.
• Install Video Call Application -: Many voip providers offer a software (app for mobile or computer) which allows you to make video calls. Check out the last section where we have compiled list of all such apps which offer free video calls. However please note that all these apps may not be available for your mobile phone. This is because some voip provider offers apps for only iPhone or Android or Windows etc. So just use the app which is compatible with your device.
• Ask your friend to install the same voip application in his smart phone/computer -: All of these apps offer video calls to a person who is using the same app. Consider it like this – you can message your facebook friend from your twitter account. In short, you both need same app (it does not matter if you two are using different devices). That work’s !
• Add your friend as contact -: Some app do not require you to explicitly add your friends as your contact. It scans your address book and automatically finds your friends. Some apps explicitly asks you to add contact (Like Skype).
• Call your friend (assuming he is also connected to internet) and video chat for as long as you like.

List of Video Calling Apps for Mobile and Computer

As we have said earlier, some apps are available for almost all types of mobile phone. However some applications are limited to iPhone, Windows Mobile or Android Phones. To help you out, below is a compiled list of mobile apps sorted according to phone operating system.