Google Voice iPhone app goes native

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 17 November 2010 07:51

Your IT - Mobility

Google Voice for iPhone has made the leap from a web app to a native app.

Google Voice is Google's telephony service. It is offered in the US only, with features including one number to reach multiple phones (with simultaneous ringing or rule-based direction), low-cost international calls, speech-to-text voicemail processing, and caller blocking and screening.

Google launched a Google Voice web app for the iPhone (and Palm WebOS) at the beginning of 2010. The latest release is a native iPhone app that makes improvements in two key areas.

Since it is a real app, Google Voice for iPhone is able to use push notifications to provide immediate alerts when new voicemails or SMSes arrive.

Secondly, it inherits 'direct access number' dialling, which was added to the Android and BlackBerry versions in July. This eliminates the data traffic previously needed to establish an outgoing call, leading to significantly faster connections.

The preview page for the free app is here.