Answers to your iPhone 4 questions: FaceTime

When we put out our call for your iPhone questions, we asked that they be sent via e-mail. But Macworld.com forum member rd_amd posted such an intriguing puzzler in our fourms, we just had to answer it.

Can two people who have iPhone 4s who live in different countries initiate FaceTime calls purely over Wi-Fi and talk internationally?

Yes! We got the mobile phone number of one of our friends in the UK, added it to our iPhone’s address book, and then tapped the FaceTime button on their address book card. The FaceTime session connected immediately and we were able to enjoy a nice chat between San Francisco and Scotland, without ever actually placing an international call.

Charles has FaceTime on the brain as well:

When you do FaceTime chat, do the numbers or people you chat with show up on your AT&T bill?? I understand that FaceTime doesn’t use minutes or data, but does it keep a record of who you face chatted with since you have to begin the process by calling the person first?

If you initiated the FaceTime chat via a phone call, your AT&T bill will include a record of that call (although not the FaceTime chat). However, if you’ve initiated the FaceTime chat directly—by tapping the FaceTime button in a contact screen, as we did in our SF-to-Scotland example above—the chat never accesses the cellular network, so it never appears, in any form, on your wireless bill. (Remember, of course, that a FaceTime chat currently requires a Wi-Fi connection as well as two iPhone 4-using chatters.)

If you haven’t already, we invited you to read Dan Moren’s hands on with FaceTime, which gives an overview of how the iPhone 4’s video-chat feature works.