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I used to be a huge fan of Google Voice, but I'm not so hot on it anymore. I started using it because I didn't have good at&t reception at my house. It was a
by davux 15y ago
I used to be a huge fan of Google Voice, but I'm not so hot on it anymore. I started using it because I didn't have good at&t reception at my house. It was a godsend at first, I could actually get text messages without having my phone in a very specific place.
But as I continued to use the service...
- Not having MMS shouldn't be a big deal, and it isn't. Until someone wants to send you one. "Oh no, send it to my other number, sorry about that. Which number? Oh, you told me not to text there, so I deleted it." But then people start sending everything to that number, and you have to tell them which number to use for what thing. People hate this, and I don't blame them--it gets confusing.
- GV is seen as a landline, goodbye all of those cheap m2m minutes, you're now costing your friends part of their anytime minutes even though you're actually talking to them on your cell phone. This isn't a huge deal, except for those people that don't have many anytime minutes--because they mostly only call cell phones. I'd love to know whether this is a problem when you port your GV number to Sprint, but I have no idea.
- GV will sometimes drop SMS forwarding. I miss around 1 message a week (call it 1 in 1000), it'll show up on google.com/voice, but it never makes it to my phone.
- For several years, all the Google forwarding numbers (the numbers that you will get an SMS from, a unique number per contact that is generated the first time they send you a message) were in the 406 area code. This made it pretty easy to always be sure of which number you were sending to. Last year, they started assigning numbers based on any area code. This means you must be very rigid in how you add phone numbers to your contacts. It gets confusing when you have a contact with two SMS-capable numbers, now you have 4 numbers (Home, Work, Pager, Home Fax?). This is a big problem if you sync with Exchange, less so if you can assign custom number labels (Home GV, Work GV, etc.).
- Sometimes messages are delayed. Perhaps once a month I'll start getting messages delayed by an hour or so. This happens with cell carriers too (although I rarely see it on that side), so not as big of a deal as dropped messages.
- I won't even get into the lack of an API and the frustration that causes for those that choose to write apps that utilize or extend GV.
After years using GV, I now have a MicroCell at home, and I've switched everyone back to my at&t number. It's just less confusing. I've wanted to love GV so badly, but it just isn't the silver bullet that it is advertised as.
Maybe Google will fix Google Voice, but I'm not as optimistic as I used to be. :(
- Athtar 15y agoDid you switch your GV number to AT&T? Or did you use a new number? I have been considering switching my GV number back to a cell carrier for a while, but I have heard/read that there might be issue doing that. Primarily with SMS/texting receipts, incoming calls from other GV numbers, etc.
- davux 15y agoI didn't port (and wouldn't for the MMS/landline issues alone, I think) - I did it all 'on top' of an at&t and an ipkall.com/SIP/asterisk number.
- shoota 15y agoI take it you've never used the Google Voice application for Android/iPhone? On my android phone the text message issues you've mention disappear as there are no forwarding numbers and every message arrives on my phone.
- davux 15y agoI have used the Android app a little bit, the integration looks great on the surface. The problem (as I understand it) is that the GV app uses data, which means it uses more battery than just SMS, and doesn't work as well in low signal circumstances. I don't have first-hand experience of this though, and I can imagine for some people it wouldn't be a problem.
- tdfx 15y agoThe Android app is terrible in low signal situations. When sending a message it blocks the entire app with a "Sending" modal window. I don't know how they could've fucked that up so bad. If you've going in and out of service you have to kill the app and reopen it to even get back to the inbox. I can't imagine why they didn't just show the message in a pending status the way the standard SMS app does.
- drivebyacct2 15y agoI've only ever had 2 instances of someone trying to MMS me and when Google rolls out MMS support (it's coming, it's already here for some Sprint users), I'll do the same thing I normally do. Delete it immediately. Email them to me, any MMS capable phone can, but more importantly, use the email client so they're not super compressed. Don't know what you mean with the SMS forwarding, but the again I use the native app. I don't understand the bit about the phone numbers? Isn't the point that you just have the one Google Voice number and it rings your other phones according to your contact rules or such? People still use faxes (a bit sarcastic, but it is HN). All that having been said, I would kill for an API. I'm thinking about giving koush's DeskSMS a shot, purely because it has an API.