My kids are going out of the country for the summer. They both have ipod touches and always want to facetime. I have an android phone and my laptop.
I’m looking for advice on something I can video chat with them why they are away. Of couse I can’t facetime and would prefer to not give them Skype accounts.
Thanks
Google Hangouts? As far as I recall it has clients on both Android and iPhone and it has video chatting.
I’m going to have to go with either Skype or Hangouts, though I realize that likely isn’t what you want to hear.
My boy is in the Navy, based out of Yokosuka, Japan.
We both have iPhone 6’s and use FaceTime. His mom (my ex) has an Android phone so he Skypes with her. I asked him if there was a quality difference and he stated “Not too much”. He then added that he likes FaceTime better because it seems to use less data.
I don’t have much experience with Skype, but a 30 minute VIDEO chat uses about 64MB of data on FaceTime. That’s pretty damned efficient. The audio is superb… basically the best telephony audio you can have, while the video is fairly lo-fi. I swear the audio calls to freakin Japan are clearer than my calls across town to my wife while I’m at work, on T-Mobile’s network 
I’m not an Apple fanboy by any stretch, but credit where credit is due… FaceTime kicks alot of ass. If Skype is anywhere close to it in quality, that’s what I’d go for personally.
Edit: You didn’t mention it one way or the other, but Telegram is the bee’s knees for instant messaging. My son and I drop dozens of photos into a 3-way chat between him, myself and his mom. You can go back weeks later and filter those chats by media and look at just the photos, documents, etc. There are clients for it on all mobile platforms, as well as a nifty web interface and even desktop clients. You might find it a very handy tool, if you aren’t already using it.
I can’t recommend it enough.
Try https://jitsi.org in particular https://meet.jit.si for their HTML5 WebRTC conferencing application.
…or linphone could be an alternative! I have no experience with it, but prism-break.org recommend it as jitsi.
Whoa… wait a minute. Linphone has an actual iOS and Android app? That might be the ticket.
That might be an option for me as well, if I swap back to a pure Android phone or (more likely) stay with Apple until a compelling Ubuntu Phone is released stateside.
I actually just went and set up a couple accounts at linphone and used the web client to my Android phone and it worked pretty well, video chat and all.
That’s what I’m still waiting for! 
Yea I would say hangouts as that is what I use exclusively. I know it isn’t open source but for somethings you just have to use what others do.
Yeah, for the most part, mobile is the realm of proprietary systems. I hope Ubuntu Phone might make a small difference in that, but I don’t really know.
I find both Android and iOS to be competent, with each having it’s strengths and weaknesses (and closed source shenanigans). I wish there was something else out there and readily available, but there’s not… not yet.
I have family overseas as well.
Facetime in the Apple walled garden is the best of all, it has to be said. It works beautifully. Have you thought of buying a cheap used iPhone 4s or iPhone 5?
If, like us, not everybody has the money to own an Apple device then you need to look at the best CROSS PLATFORM alternative.
Skype used to be pretty good years ago but since Micro$oft bought them out is no good for video chat internationally in my experience.
Yahoo Messenger has been in decline for years, its rubbish for video chat now.
Google hangouts is said to be okish but very few people want the hassle and intrusion of having a Google account. I have my doubts Apple users are going to like being asked to try use it. Is it even available on iOS??
There is a messenger app called ‘Viber’ that is cross platform ie. Linux/Mac/iOS/Windows. This has video chat now and works pretty nicely. I would recommend you give it a look.
Cheers!
Hangouts is available on iOS but I recently had my dad hangout video me using face time. Haven’t been able to reproduce how he did it but would love to find a way