By Thomas Newton on Wednesday, 3rd March 2010

Nokia has just launched a free Skype app in the Ovi Store, bringing free Skype-to-Skype calls to its Symbian-based smartphones.

So this equals free calls forever right? The end of mobile contracts as we know it? Not quite. Skype for Symbian will give Nokia smartphone users the opportunity to use Skype on the go over Wi-Fi or over a data connection – whilst use over Wi-Fi will be free, you’re going to need to pay for any calls made over 3G, GPRS or EDGE as part of your contract’s data plan.

As well as allowing you to make free calls to other Skype numbers, the app will also allow you to IM on the go and share pictures, videos and other files as you would on the desktop version of Skype.

Initially the app will only be available to Nokia smartphones running on Symbian ^1. Later in the year Skype for Symbian will be rolled out to Symbian-based phones from other manufacturers which we’re told includes Sony Ericsson. Hopefully this means we’ll get to see Skype in action on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz when it is released.

For now, you’ll be able to run Skype for Symbian on the following handsets:

Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia X6, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia 5530, Nokia E72, Nokia E71, Nokia E90, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E51, Nokia N96, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N85, Nokia N82, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia N79, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia 6210 Navigator and the Nokia 5320.

You can download the app here or visit or visit skype.com/m from your Nokia smartphone.