LINE
Line is a free voice calling application for smart phones. Besides the trickiness of setting up an account the quality of the application is very impressive. It has not found much popularity in the United States or much of Europe but is very popular in countries like Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Spain, and Switzerland among some others. The emojis and game attachments seem to be the draw among its users. The user has very little control over the settings of the application because it was meant for smart phone calling. The addition of PC/Mac devices is simply convenience because the accessibility does not improve much.
USERNAME
Ives and I first had trouble just getting in contract with each other because of the fact that Ives does not have a smart phone and you can not sign up from your computer only. A mobile phone number, that needs to be authorized, is needed to make an account. Even after that, the profile that you have now created can not be seen by others until you make a username that people can search for which we did not figure out for quite some time.
Sound Control
The control that the user is given through line is actually non-existent. We believe that is because the application is based on its smart phone use where the control of levels during a voice call is just volume control. The user can not even choose which microphone to use or control the volume of the incoming call. All of this must be done through the computer settings.
Sound Quality
Both of us were very impressed with the quality and latency of the call. Neither of us had a hard time hearing each other or experienced drop off through volume changes or latency. We found that the latency of the application was varying between 50-80 ms which we thought was pretty accurate considering the quality we were hearing.