Google Launches A Voice App For iPhones
Google has released versions of Google Voice for the iPhone and Palm webOS operating systems. It works on the iPhone running the 3.0 operating system. It also operates on Palm’s Pre and Pixi handsets, and provides a large chunk of the functionality of the native Voice apps for Android and BlackBerry to your phone’s browser.
Google Voice can insert itself as your default phone interface on Android and BlackBerry, and then accesses the contacts stored on your phone. On the iPhone, it remains a secondary interface and can’t sget access to your local contacts. (You can, however, use Google Sync to sync your phone’s contacts with your Google Account.)
The new mobile-specific Web site for Google Voice may be seen as app-like in certain ways. Being fast and using local storage, it is not required to load in your entire Google Voice inbox every time you launch it. You only need a mobile phone service and a Google Voice account to use the application. A dialer and a directory have been introduced for looking people up. And, finally, you no longer have to entertain Google Voice’s dial-around service (where, to make a connection, the Google Voice service dials both the person you are calling as well as your phone). Now it has come up with an ingenuous idea. Google Voice dials out from your phone, and displays your Voice account’s phone number as the caller’s ID the phone of the person you’re calling. Users can send and receive text messages using the mobile applications.
This new application provides Google the luxury to sidestep restrictions imposed by Apple. You may recall that Google had tried to promote Voice as a native iPhone app last year, but Apple had blocked it from all its stores. Their reason was that Google Voice app interfered with the iPhone’s built-in telephone components. Now it will be interesting to see how Apple would respond to this. What was once a buddy-buddy relationship between Cupertino and Mountain View, has now turned into somewhat sour. It started with Apple’s refusal to allow Google Voice app last year. Apple said that it was merely looking in to app’s compatibility with the iPhone. But that process, already into eighth month, seems to be never ending. The relationship hit its bottom when Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt quit from Apple’s board of directors, last August. Release of Android, ChromeOS and recently the Nexus One Smartphone, by Google, have further widened the rift. Apple seems to be pretty much annoyed by its former best mate and is even contemplating to sign up for Bing, Microsoft’s search engine.
However, the new Web-based Google Voice is impressive and its major advantage lies in the fact that it lets Web developers bring more application-like functionality to Web apps but it cannot be a substitute for a true native Google Voice for iPhone.
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This is an old app. I was using it last year when I was in US. This app does not work here in India. I am using an iPhone.