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Google Voice

S

System6

Well-Known Member
I am either having problems with this app, or do not understand it. YES, I have a Google voice account. I posted this in the official Google forums and I am re-posting it here in hopes to find answers and help. This is my last update....

Thanks for all the help thus far. I cannot uninstall or reinstall Google voice as it comes on the Nexus one and cannot be removed. It has no updates either.

I logged off of Google voice and back on twice and here is what I am getting. I took screen shots step by step of me setting it up. As you can see there are no calling options once set up, just a voice mail inbox.

I saw in other people pix and videos that when you touched a contacts picture google voice was an option like the Facebook option (I currently have FB sync disabled).

Here is the gallery. Picasa Web Albums - System6music - Nexus one Goo...

Is it working for voicemail yes, calling, no. It seems kinda of pointless to me at the moment as I don't understand what it is good for. I know you can have 1 universal number and have it ring separate lines, voice mail transcript, etc, but I was to understand that this was VOIP calling. How is this NOT VOIP calling if you can log into Google voice and call people via a high speed internet connection?

I guess a lot of people were using the gizmo5 SIP, but no more as you cannot create an account because Google bought them.
HOWTO: Free Calling with Google Voice - Google Voice Help

Out of all of my T-mobile phones, this gets the best reception, but I have steel siding on my house and still get spotty coverage in a lot of areas. Man do I miss UMA!

Finally, do Google voicemails not get pushed to the phone? I have to set an "Update interval" which either drains my battery or gets me my voicemails like an hour late, no? Someone please explain and sell me on what the hell Google voice is and what it's good for because I believe I have a lot of misconceptions. :)


If you want more info or this doesn't make sense, here is the full thread. Thanks in advance! :)

Making VOIP calls with Google Vocie - Google Mobile Help
 
Google Voice is no doubt confusing. I have only played with it on the Hero and not the Nexus One - so the version on the Nexus might be different. My observations:

Google Voice (in general) has nothing to do with VoIP. Forgetting the Android aspect for a moment, if you login to your GV account and make a call from the website, it will connect the dialed number to whatever phone you have registered. Lets say you register your home phone, cell phone, and work phone. You can go to the website and initiate a call to wherever you want and have it connected to your work phone. That has nothing to do with VoIP, though Google are probably carrying it over IP in the network somewhere.

There are multiple ways to start a Google Voice call. You can go to the Google Voice website as described previously, but obviously that requires an Internet connection. Ultimately, you're trying to connect two landline phones so they needed another way. The solution is that you can call your own GV number and after entering your PIN press 2 followed by the destination number. Details are at Making calls : Calls - Google Voice Help

Here comes the Android part. Using the GV app from Google, you have to go into the settings and choose which calls you want to use GV and which ones you want to be normal. IIRC, you can choose to have all calls us GV, only international, or for the phone to ask you every time. You still make the calls through your normal phone app or contacts manager just like any other call. The key here is when you choose to have GV initiate the call, it will use the second method I described (calling your GV number). It does not use the data connection/ website to make the call. You are in no way using VoiP or your 3G data connection. (ok, well - I think there is actually a little something going on over the data connection, but your phone is still basically making a regular call).

There are two ways that I know of initiate a call over the data connection. First you can go to the GV website on your Nexus One. Go to the contacts list on the GV website and you can initiate the call. Your cell phone will ring first and after you pick up it will connect you to the destination (just like the work scenario I described earlier). Second, there is another app in the market called GV something. Just search for it. It has an option in the setting to initiate the call over the data connection. I think you select "call box" or something like that. These two solutions only initiate the call over the data connection. The voice is still a normal call and has nothing to do with voice.

As for all the VoIP talk, if you do some advanced things you can actually get the voice going over your data connection too. If you have a Gizmo5 account, GV can be configured to forward calls to you Gizmo5 number (just like it will forward to your work phone). However, now that Google bought Gizmo5 they have closed it to new accounts. There are other ways that are a bit more complicated and require you to have a SIP account provider (like sipgate.com) and a SIP client on your Android phone (like sipdroid).

Hope that helps
 
You need to spend some time reading up on the Google Voice site. Read the entire Help section. There are also countless threads on GV on various forum sites. Once you have a better understanding you can ask some actual questions that we can answer.
 
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