http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/allfeatures/3skypephone/index.html?cm_mmc=google

I think it's a brilliant idea, why let VOIP kill you off when you can embrace it and catch the costs of things skpye dosent cover?  I'm considering getting one of these phones, despite few people I know using skype, I think it's a great idea. The phone's cheap enough and the tarrifs on 3 are appealing to me...

More companies/industries should follow that example. Like the oft-maligned **AA's - if they were to embrace p2p and provide a superior service to the pirates' at a reasonable price (possibly subscription based instead of per-download.. or a choice of both) then I'm near certain they'd see a huge uptake. People go pirate for a few basic reasons - price, convenience, and stickin' it to the man.

Some will never want to go legal, the income from these people is lost whatever they do, but if they had their own service that meant you could avoid all the fakes and virii and get high-quality, multi-format (preferably sans DRM.. it'd only get broken a week later if they tried to use it), legal recordings.. hell, they'd make a killing. They could then use the p2p systems like bittorrent or emule to distribute stuff without putting a massive load on their server - exactly what p2p was designed for.

I'm confused. It is a normal mobile phone with Skype functionality, or just a phone that allows Skype calls?

They could have made it a bit better looking too...

It's a regular mobile phone, that gives free skype to skype calls and messaging as well as regular mobile calls and texts. I think it looks ok, abit like my old phone and I liked that.

Hey, if it gets the job done, it could look like the old brick phones for all I care!

I don't believe it supports Skype-out, so your skype calls are limited to those on PCs as they want the telephone revenue for themselves.  Kinda limits its use IMHO.