One of the biggest features for the HTC EVO 4G for Sprint, besides WiMax/4G, is video chatting with Qik. The service has been largely touted and hyped by Sprint and it was also used as one of many excuses for the $10 “premium service” charge on the HTC EVO 4G data plan.
With all the excitement building up, however, Qik suffered a crippling surge with 20 times the normal load on its servers. The server overload has been causing dropped connections and spotty service, so the video company says it is working quickly to boost capacity and get everything back on track.
Earlier, the application wasn’t visible on the Android Market, which was quickly resolved by Google and the Android team. However, Qik later had to remove the chat client due to server overload issues so it may be a while before we see it back in action. Unfortunately, there is no defined time frame for when server capacity might be boosted or when the service will go live again. This is definitely not the greatest thing for EVO 4G users who were anxiously waiting for video chatting capabilities at launch, but at least the issue has been openly addressed and is quickly being resolved.
If you still find yourself impatient and eager to try out 2-way video calling on your EVO 4G, you might want to give Fring a shot. Just note that in our tests, video quality was terrible over Sprint’s 3G network, but somewhat improved over WiFi. If you happen to live in a 4G/WiMax city, it might not be half bad, either. Best of all, the Fring application and video chat service is free right now.
In the meantime, if you have any questions, comments or concerns, Qik has made itself available to answer any of them via e-mail.
[Via: Qik]