How are they videochatting with their phones?

oh well mim is good and was released in 2011. no big deal really and possible now

A) They weren't using Skype on their computers. Apparently it's a fake program called "Web" or possibly they are saying that as slang for whatever fictional video program they are using. More than once people say to "web" them for a video call.

B) The phone thing is a non-issue to me. I'm watching a movie (if anyone still falls for "this is real footage" then that's their own fault). Sometimes trivia is neat, like "ohhh the clock said it was 5 o'clock, then in the same scene later it says 2 o'clock" but to let small things like that bother you is a bit much. The directors needed a way to make a found footage movie and they did it. Would you have preferred someone carrying a video camera on their shoulder for the entire movie, even while in the face of death lol.

"Most people on the boards are casting experts. It's why they all work in Hollywood right?"

I remember UMTS and 3G being a pretty big deal back in 2004-2005 for the exact reason that it allowed video calls to be made. The cell phone Amy had is similar to a Motorola RAZR V3x (or V3xx etc. they made a ton of variants) that I also owned back in the day, and it could actually make video calls (also see the Sony Ericsson Z1010 that was among the first to be able to do that).
Still, the fact is that the quality of the video calls were never even remotely as crisp as in the film, and no one really used this functionality back then, because it was a gimmick due to the expensive data rates.
iPhones really didn't offer anything new in terms of technology, but were really a good combination of features previously introduced by other manufacturers combined into a user-friendly and well thought out package. The only thing that was probably really innovative was the iOS, and the app store. Aside from that, the marketing was well executed to such an extent, that the introduction of the iPhone is treated now as a watershed moment of hand-held technology. (But then some people now think that the iPod was the first portable MP3 player 'invented')
Of course, this aspect of the film is still unrealistic because video calls just weren't widespread in 2007 and were just a novelty that only geeks cared about, or even made. I consider this a necessary evil of found footage films, where the filmmakers have to come up with an explanation of how all the major events of the story were recorded on camera. The explanation was alright in Blair Witch, but not so much in Paranormal Activity for example.

I wondered why they didn't just talk with the phones to their ear so they could watch where they were walking rather than staring into the phone all day. They could bump into someone or something, perhaps even dropping their phone and having it shatter on the ground. Or even worse, they could be too busy staring at their phones video calling and get run over by a car and die. I wonder if that would be worse than being tortured by a psychopath.

Burn, witch! Burn, witch! Burn! Burn! Burn!

There are MANY third party hack apps that can be downloaded. eg I installed Skype on an ancient CDMA Blackberry Curve back in 2008. It was never officially supported but it certainly worked. ISkoot was also around as were MANY asian video chat programs that most tech savvy kids could certainly download. If it makes such a huge reality issue for you just pretend film is 2010-11 which is when thousands of easy video chat programs appeared

Even ICQ had a video chat module back in the day

There were many many phones before the iphone capable of videochat, it's just that apple pretends that they invented it

i agree that it's one of the less believable aspects of this movie (recorded videochats) but it's a compromise im willing to accept

Skype was hardly the first video chat app. Windows had Netmeeting, and there was also CUSeeMe, among others.

I know both apps allowed taking snapshots and I'm pretty sure Netmeeting allowed video recording.

I thought that too...but then i realized there would be no movie if they didnt fake it up. So i let it be.

Oh my god, unisex names killed my family.