By Sharla Sikes

Well, last year anyway. The minute it hit stores, customers were looking for the hack that would open it up to VoIP and other applications, and it didn’t take long.

Now, new downloadable applications continue to flourish for the iPhone, and fring is the latest to join the game.

fring had previously offered a VoIP application for smartphones and pocket PCs using Windows Mobile. Its new VoIP client for the iPhone is designed for “jailbreaked” iPhones

fring calls the new application a “light, sneak preview R&D version;” an official version should hit later in the year when Apple opens the iPhone to third party developers.

fring’s iPhone application features low-cost or free VoIP calling and instant messaging capability through Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Skype, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo! Messenger, and AIM. fring hopes the R&D version will reveal the demand from iPhone users for the popular service and provide feedback for the official version.

fring offers its users a single contact list combining contacts from all of the users’s “selected internet communities,” including voice, e-mail and instant messaging. fring’s always-on application gives users presence indicators noting their contacts’ status (online, away, offline, in a call, mobile or at their PC)

fring offers more information at its fring blog and a preview version at the fringcubator site.

Not many iPhone users may be willing to jailbreak their phones (risking “bricking” them) in order to download this app, but for those who already have, it may catch on. Some, however, think that fring may bring iPhone users to consider jailbreaking their phones.

I would expect more may be willing to wait, and jump on the bandwagon when the official version is released later in the year.

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