Google Voice Apps Arrive For Android and Blackberry

Mark Mathson writes "Two Google Voice apps have been released for Blackberry and Android phones. The Android app is the most complete, and it 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. You can listen to or read voicemails and text messages (all voicemails are automatically transcribed), access call history, send SMS messages and place international calls at low rates."

Re:I don't get the hysteria over Google Voice

[Bigby]

It will be quite useful for us consultants that have our personal cell phone, Consulting company phone, and usually even a client phone (for long term projects). It is like having 3 email addresses and checking them all at once through an email client.

In addition to that, you can treat your voice mail like email and listen the voice mail only if necessary. This is much quicker for those of us with Blackberries and the like.

Re:This is great.

[ickleberry]

you do realise that Chrome/Android are just pushing platforms for Google's Web services (and therefore AdWords) and the fact that they use the Linux kernel is just a minor technical detail since most of these devices will be too locked down to even get a bash session running without a day's worth of jailbreaking and (in the case of Android) unlocking.

Re:It'd be nice...

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Just fill out the form on the main page. I got my invitation in less than 24 hours last week.

Here's the link: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/ [google.com]

Re:This is great.

[Rich0]

It might not hurt to clarify that the API for native code was only opened up about a week ago. Until then, all applications that used the supported SDK were completely emulated. The SDK did provide APIs for playing video/etc, of course, and the SDK itself would have been natively implemented and would make use if embedded hardware where possible.

Note also that per the request of the phone manufacturers, Google has tried to make it hard to design apps that might encode/compress audio in realtime for network transmission (VOIP/etc). Obviously the phone has that hardware integrated into it for GSM, but the phone company would obviously prefer that all actual phone calls be made via GSM so that they can bill them.

Re:Most of this functionality already existed on G

[Evan Charlton]

Since you felt the need to ask, no, it wasn't. You can choose believe that or not--it makes no difference to me.