Google Voice Review – the Pros and Cons
Pros
- Web interface and history of all text messages, phone calls and voicemails.
- Transcribes voicemail messages to text message and posts to web interface
- Transcribed voicemail messages and text messages are searchable for the user
- Missed call log when cell phone is out of service
- One phone number can ring multiple phones, work and cell
- Able to choose a new number when creating the account
- Pulls in contact list from gmail account
- Able to send text messages directly from web interface
- Able to send and receive text messages from any email address – Sept 09 2009
- Web interface is accessible over mobile phone web browser
- Can port the google voice number to a cell phone provider
- Record phone conversation
- Currently Free, no charges for all 50 US states and Canada calling and text messaging
- Mass texting feature has been added, maximum 5 people at once.
Cons
- No official mobile application for Windows Mobile or iPhone
- No MMS or picturemail support
- No incoming email to text message support
- No short code support
- No scheduling for a text message to be sent at a later time
- No statistics/metrics on phone calls/text messages
- No 212 or 917 numbers available, limited combinations of 646 numbers
- Have new sets of 917 and 646 numbers available- Aug 13th 2009
- Can’t port a number to the google voice account
- Slight delay in voice conversation, around a full second lag – Oct 09 not as often
- Lose free minutes when dialing people on the same cell phone carrier
- Does not support “Calltones” or “Ringback” music
- Privacy concerns routing through Google
http://www.google.com/voice
* No mass texting feature on web interface – thats a good thing.
* No mobile application for Windows Mobile – too bad.
* No picturemail support – I guess it can be useful, but I’m not sure if there is any point when you can email pictures….and there is always picasa.
* No email to text message support –
* No statistics/metrics on phone calls/text messages – this is bound to exist, just not to us right now.
* No 212 or 917 numbers available, limited combinations of 646 numbers – that is just the way the number lottery works. 212 #s are rare in any phone system that is not a landline – 646 is the new area code for manhattan anyway.
One con you missed is porting a number to google voice and out of it. I see that being more useful.
They’re working on number porting, give it time. Agree with Gary: Mass texting can be easily used by spammers (but would be a nice feature if they could place limitations).
In regards to privacy concerns… Google owns you whether you use Gvoice or not.
Pros:
*Ability to record conversations
Whether or not Google allows mass texting spammers will find a way to do it, I find it a con also.
“* No picturemail support – I guess it can be useful, but I’m not sure if there is any point when you can email pictures….and there is always picasa.”
That’s what the Iphone thought, people can always email, except not everyone else has email on their phone. And on top of that, not everyone’s email on their phone is constantly checking to see if their is a new email to pull down from the server.
I don’t have google voice but after reading this blog I’m going to check it out. Sounds much more advanced that what I have on my Samsung Moment. I’m not sure what program it is, but I’m going to give google a try. Thanks for the pros and cons list.
Joey – Mass texting from a web interface is now implemented.
There is a very good desktop application designed to do just that called Google Voice Mass SMS v2.5. The company comes out with a new version about every month based on what feedback they get from the users. They are also working on a mobile version.
I put the link below:
http://dcomp.10spot.me/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=49