Google Voice, previously called Grand Central, is rolling out the first mobile apps for the service this evening. The main function of the apps is to make it easier to use your Google Voice phone number by automatically routing outbound calls through Google and to the recipient. We first mentioned they were coming last month when we broke the news that Google would start letting users port their phone numbers over to the Voice product sometime this year.
Google Voice users get a phone number that should be the only number you give out to people. You route calls to mobile, home and other phones based on who’s calling and when. But there’s always been a nagging problem with the service – when you call out from your phones, people don’t see your Google Voice number on caller ID. They just see whatever phone number you are calling from. That means your friends have to store another phone number for you, or they don’t know who’s calling.
Google had the same issue with text messaging, but fixed that problem earlier this year by playing middle-man to those messages. Now they are doing something similar with voice calls via mobile apps. The applications make outbound calls to Google Voice, and those calls are then routed to the recipient, who sees the Google Voice number as the caller.
Two apps are being released tomorrow morning, for Blackberry and Android phones. The Android app is the most complete and takes over the native dialer, address book and call log. Users won’t be bothered with accidentally dialing numbers through the device phone number. The Blackberry app is less integrated, accessing only the native address book, and uses its own dialer. Users can’t simply go into the call log and return missed calls. They need to go back to the address book and select Google Voice to make the call. Still, it solves a big problem.
The apps also allow users to access the core features of Google Voice. Listen to/read voicemails and text messages (all voicemails are automatically transcribed as well), access call history, send SMS messages and place international calls at low rates.
Google Voice cofounder Craig Walker gave me a demo this afternoon of both apps, and told me that an iPhone version is in the works, too.
The apps can be downloaded at m.google.com/voice starting tomorrow (Wednesday).
How about first releasing all the beta invites for the web version?
we’ve heard from a number of people, and Google confirms, that they continue to roll out a lot of invites to the service. One thing they want to avoid is this: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/13/if-you-wanna-be-a-phone-company-you-cant-go-dead/
Patience, my friend, you’ll get it soon enough. And yep, I got my invite, but I’ve been on the waiting list for a while.
Can’t wait to get my hands on one
Signed up for mine 2 months ago, got it last Friday.
Same here, cant wait for the iphone app!!
Signed up many months ago, still waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
I never signed up, but got it last week. Dont see a point until they release the iphone version though.
I don’t see a point in your comment. People have other phones than the iphone, its not the end all and everywhere machine you think it is. Android is google’s phone, its natural they would come out with the app for their products before others. Also, Blackberrys (RIM) have more marketshare than iPhones (Apple) too.
I ended up with 2 invites. I tried using the second one to create a second account, until I got to the part where I had to link it to another phone number. I only had one phone number and Google doesn’t let you use the same forwarding number on two different accounts.
Now I’m stuck with an extra account that doesn’t really work.
Just set the account you can’t route to a mobile phone to do not disturb or add a landline to it. I have a spare gv number not linked to a mobile number yet. You can share the same landline across gv numbers. You can also sign up for a free number somewhere else like ribbit (won’t be a local number but is free) and add your mobile number to it then add the ribbit number it to the gv account. The gv number will call the ribbit number which in turn will ring your mobile.
You may have to turn off call screening in gv. Test it to see how it works.
Amazing, simply amazing
That’s what I was thinking. And the beauty of Android that iPhone and other OSes will never see is integration at the very core. How amazing is that? Those new Android phones can’t come fast enough.
Well as soon as the iPhone app comes out, I’ll be on this. I love Google Voice, but the number thing is a real issue; as long as people can call you on your other number, your use of Google Voice is hit and miss.
Very excited about the iPhone app.
In the meantime, GV Mobile is excellent. It sends SMS natively, and for outbound calls, it dials the recipient and your mobile # simultaneously and patches you together.
There are already plenty of apps out there for the iPhone that let you use google voice. The best one i have seen so far is VoiceCentral.
The question is whether google will release a public API for the service or not. Google has not impressed me with their UI yet, but if they release the API, I am sure the other guys will make this service a necessity.
Sure but none of them will give you full control of Dialer, Phonebook and Call Logs. Google Voice for Android is a killer application for this platform.
Maybe they won’t do an iPhone app? Would using GoogleVoice be enough of a draw for someone to pick Android/Gphone over iPhone
they already said they were.
Admittedly this is selfish, but I hope they continue to endorse 3rd party iPhone apps as they have. Instead of creating their own:
http://www.riverturn.com/iphone/VoiceCentral.php
sorry but its not a free app, but looks awesome.
I’m all for supporting third party apps, even though I prefer GV Mobile over VoiceCentral. I think in this case though 3rd party apps have reached their limit (because of Apple limitations on background apps). Even if 3rd party apps got push their is still the annoying issue of having to sign in to a separate app to return missed phone calls and not being able to use the native dialer. What I want is Google to work directly with Apple to come out with a solution like they just did for Android.
The Craig Walker link should probably go to crunchbase.
what happens with stuff like tmobile’s fav5? could someone set the google voice # as one of their 5 favorite #’s and get unlimited free calling?
Yes. That’s precisely the point.
But free calls within the same network gets screwed. Most of my calls are free as most people around me have an iPhone and hence on At&t. Now if I dial via Google voice the calls will be charged.
You have to imagine that carriers will have to try to fight this.
Not sure how much money they make from people dialing out of the US on their mobiles (great margins…), but most of could quickly be gone for GV users.
I really want a g-voice invite
And please, please, please, can the iPhone app have push?
Why would it need Push?
You get a phone call? It rings your phone.
You get an SMS? It sends it to you via SMS.
I really see no use for push what-so-ever.
This is the problem with iPhone users, they have no idea how a phone works.
There are people who don’t pay AT&T for SMS due to the cost. People who are in this camp would benefit from a Google Voice app that would push SMS notifications. Bypassing AT&T’s SMS service altogether.
And voicemail?
You get a voicemail and it goes where? To your non-push gmail account?
I’m sure that phone company execs would say that the problem with google is that they don’t understand how telephony in general works.
The whole point of google voice, android, and the iphone is that we don’t like the way phones work. That includes paying thousands per megabyte on sms. Until google voice forwards sms to email, I’d appreciate push. I’m certainly not going to be paying my cell provider for them.
The iPhone doesn’t have push Gmail? Funny, the BlackBerry does.
And as for voice mail, you can setup SMS notification to go along with the email.
yea, and the blackberry doesnt do a full two sync either. Funny, the iphone does.
But pushing voicemail via email would be showing ignorance of how a phone works.
So I know you wouldn’t suggest that as a solution, Ryan.
Btw, I can understand saying, “send sms to your phone.” That’s a simple and direct solution, though some may wish for more freedom than what that method provides.
What I can’t understand is why anyone would suggest sms as a solution when email is available. Especially for something like voicemail. The delays alone make it untenable.
As for push gmail, you know as well as I do that the ball’s in google’s court. Though I have it already via Prowl’s push notifications. For me the simplest solution’s the best. Google’s Voice app should provide push for both sms and voicemail since some people don’t even want those notifications sent to their mail account. It should actually act like voicemail (and not a strange proxy), something I’d think you could understand since you intoned that iphone users couldn’t.
I think you are the one who is clueless here. You need push for notification of new voicemail, but mostly for incoming sms. Google Voice can send and receive sms for free over your data connection (using an iPhone app like GV Mobile). The only issue now is that there is no official google api so sms and voicemail have to be checked manually by opening the app. That’s not a huge issue for me so I’ve already eliminated my sms plan with at&t, but if you can get push notification of sms with a google voice app then it makes it an even easier decision.
I actually do know how a phone works, Ryan. However, I’m moving to London in two months and having a GV app with push notifications would enable me to continue using my US-based number to receive SMS messages in real time from friends back home, with no exorbitant carrier fees. Happy now?
That sounds intentionally obtuse. What about games, social apps, etc., that need real-time updates? Should such apps run in the background and maintain socket connections or run web servers? Should they use comet? SMS would work for some of those issues (sometimes it can run in the background and initiate actions), but SMS is limited by capabilities (bandwidth and latency) and high tariffs. Also, bi-directional communication is consistently one of the bottlenecks to fully-functioning mobile apps and web apps. Check out comments on Android and Iphone programming groups about sockets, Comet, XMPP, JSON, etc. Obviously a push framework could provide a nice solution to lots of different problems. SMS is overpriced, inflexible, slow, tied to a phone number, annoying… in short, a bottleneck. I felt like being captain obvious for the moment.
what happened to no more embo stories, mike?
Isn’t Google Voice acting like a session controller to push its caller ID instead of the mobile device’s phone number? It’s like a big PBX.
spoofing caller ID is illegal outside of the USA
What exactly is illegal? Representing that your phone has a number not assigned to it? Representing that you are calling from a number that you don’t have rights to?
Curious…
This is awesome. I love how they are releasing it for blackberry too (although I am quite disappointed to hear that it wont be as integrated as the android version). I am really happy as I just got a GV invite last week and the new Sprint BB tour today.
What the real problem with using GV is telling everyone that new number. Will they ever have a way to port my cell phone # that will run through google voice?
Yes, they hope to offer that feature in the future.
http://is.gd/1zQgk
guessing Android is going to piggyback off both Google Voice and Google Calendar, which appear to be winners.
if they don’t fuck up the 3rd-party app dev market / mobile app store, they might actually give the iPhone a run for its money.
curiouser & curiouser, said Alice…
I wonder why the Blackberry version is less integrated? Less access from RIM?
Please open up to Canada.
I haven’t been able to add my Canadian phone to my grandcentral account ever since google took control.
great post!
I have been waiting for this for a long time.
“The main function of the apps is to…” connect the identity of the people you call with the people you e-mail, the content of your e-mail, and the shiz you search for.
This is awesome
Dear sir,
It’s very great post i like it,
Thanx for it.
Wow this is a great “patch” to make calls appear to come from Google Voice. Why don’t Google come out the closet and tell us they want to cut out the middle man and become a carrier.
GV seems overkill if you only have a cell phone and want cheap international calls and visual voicemail.
I prefer systems that unify the back end like Hullomail with contacts sync rather than unify the front end like Google Voice which then requires to change your cell phone habbits and replace native apps just to make a call.
Hullomail will be dead when Google Voice is out of beta. GV’s “premium” features will be free, which will quickly decimate any other players in this field.
GV is overkill man.
Check out HulloMail on Android they have voicemail integration with GMail & contacts licked.
I even saw a Twitter of someone using HulloMail for the GMail integration and GV for the single number thang…
Ha, I just tried going to m.google.com/voice on my G1 and got an error saying my device was not supported. Nice :-\
I like that they don’t even mention WInMo.
Just installed the GV app on a BB 8900, BB Bold and a BB Storm.
The app works perfectly.
Well done!
Can you send SMS messages without a cell data plan with this app?
Also could you please tell me how long it takes to start ringing your desired contact? Using the iPhone and choosing a contact and having GVDialer dial your GV#, press 2, dial number, hit # and start calling takes about 35-40 seconds. I’m hoping this if faster.
**Note on GVDialer: It sucks but it’s the only iPhone app that doesn’t use a data plan to connect to contacts.
Google breaking telecom’s business. Wait and see… :p
Ah, just installed it… it’s exactly what I was looking for! This is great. iPhone, WinMo, and Pre versions next?
Google voice Mobile App. is able to access voice mails on cellphone but so sad this is available in the US only.
Sign me up already. Reading about everyone receiving the invite already sucks! I think I signed up close to a year ago…. I still cannot wait.