Hands on with the Tango Video Calling app

We just downloaded the newly released Tango video calling app and took it for a spin as seen in the YouTube clip above.

The app works with all Windows Phones, and even allows phones without front-facing cameras to use their rear camera if they wish to show a video of where they currently are. It also lets you video chat over 3G instead of only WiFi, and will allow voice chatting over 2G service.

The voice quality is surprisingly decent. I chatted with one of our editors, Pradeep, and while he was only on 2G service, the conversation wasn’t too choppy and didn’t have any echo.

The video quality is definitely low, and the frame rate is a little slow, but it is definitely acceptable for video chatting via phones.

The app integrates with Windows Phone really well. It reads from your contacts list to find people’s phone numbers and discover who also has Tango. It is also styled to perfectly match the looks of the native Windows Phone dialing app. The app also uses toast notifications to notify you of an incoming phone call, which is really responsive and quite instant. However, the app could be better if Microsoft allowed developers to access your proximity sensor, because there’s no way to use the app up against your ear currently.

You can download this free Mango-enabled app here.