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Google Voice app or Hangouts?

S

stanw

Well-Known Member
Is there still a need for the Google Voice app? Does Hangouts allow you to listen to all of your voice messages inside this app?

Thanks.
 
stanw said:
Mine does not seem to let me do this. Is there a way to turn on this feature?
Click to expand...

Hangouts Settings > (you)@gmail.com > Google Voice > Messages - tick the checkbox to display SMS and Voicemail in Hangouts.

stanw said:
Is there still a need for the Google Voice app?
Click to expand...

I *believe* the Google Voice app is still needed so that you can place outgoing voice calls via Google Voice. No need for it if you're using the Hangouts Dialer as your primary means of communication, but if you ever need to fall back on the cellular network, the Google Voice app is what tells the Android dialer to user Google Voice instead of your cellular number.
 
I have my SMS messages displaying, though I do not see the voice messages, even though I checked the box to display them. How do you access your voice messages? Is there a button just for voice messages somewhere?

Thanks.
 
stanw said:
I have my SMS messages displaying, though I do not see the voice messages, even though I checked the box to display them. How do you access your voice messages? Is there a button just for voice messages somewhere?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I think that they should show up inline with Hangouts, just like the text messages do - at least, that's how it's working on mine. :confused:
 
The new Hangouts is beautiful, and more than a little confusing now that it can integrate with Google Voice. Google hangouts are also known as Skype alternative for you can talk to your relatives and love ones over video, in real time. While Google voice, you can also receive and send text messages but they are too different than traditional SMS messages that can cause confusion and headaches. It depends on you if what kind of application you will use.
 
I've been going back and forth between Google Voice and Hangouts for my voicemail (I don't use my GV number for SMS). Things Hangouts gets wrong when compared to Google Voice:

  1. Ability to listen to voice using the earpiece instead of the speaker
  2. Ability to mark voicemail as spam
  3. Recognizing my contacts. Despite the face the Hangouts knows the message came from one of my contacts (messages appear in the same thread as all other messages for that contact), if I tap on the contact icon to the left of the message, Hangouts tells me that there's no contact info when I tap on the sender's icon to the left of the message. However, if I view the message details first, then Hangouts does find the contact info, but then quickly forgets about it and returns to it's previous behavior.

Things Google Voice gets wrong when compared to Hangouts:

  1. Transcription is almost never available when the notification is received.
  2. The audio is almost never downloaded by the time the notification appears. I have to wait for it (with no indication that it's doing something, much less when it's finished doing it).
  3. Phone numbers in the transcription text are not clickable like they are in Hangouts. Clickable numbers make it much easier to return a call when the caller leaves a call back number in the message, and that number is different than the number they called from.

Another plus for Google Voice is that it integrates with the stock dialer, allowing me to dial numbers without knowing if they're international (i.e. from US to Canada) or not, and GV automatically kicks in for international numbers. Hangouts has no dialer integration, and requires you to be more aware of where you're calling to avoid international charges.
 
I tried to like HO's but just couldn't. I'm back to using the GV app and Textra.

HO's took a good few minutes (like 5) for a voicemail to show up, GV is pretty instant. GV does take a minute to transcribe but I've turned it off. Fun as it is, it's never right and just slows stuff down.

I also didn't like that a VM in HOs couldn't be deleted from a conversation or saved separately, or at least I never figured out how to do that. I save some VM and save some texts but there didn't seem to be a way to break them up to do it in HO's. In GV they are just always separate.

Plus what Mike said about the dialer. It's just way easier to use one dialer (and something like Voice Choice), it knows when to use GV and when not to.
 
The one thing that Google Voice app was terrible at was organization of threads. I'd have 3-4 threads of ongoing conversations with the same person. In Hangouts, they're all neatly organized to avoid clutter.
 
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