Google Voice and Sprint Make a Very Nice Couple
- By Ryan Singel
- April 22, 2011 |
- 7:02 pm |
- Categories: Cool Apps
The idea is pretty simple.
You go to Google Voice, sign up with a Sprint number, and your phone magically turns into a Google Voice phone. Existing users can go into their list of phones and click a link to turn their Sprint phone into the magic phone.
By choosing to integrate Google Voice on your Sprint phone, you get the best of both worlds with a few caveats — and it’s especially cool if you are new to Google Voice.
If you don’t already have a Google Voice account, it’s quite simple. Your Sprint number simply becomes your Google Voice number — without having to port it over — making it super easy to have one number to rule them all.
For those who aren’t familiar — that means that you can set your cellphone number to ring all your phones and even your computer through a Gmail account. You get voicemails transcribed and sent to your e-mail. You can set rules for each caller, and get cheap international calls. You can see the texts sent from your phone online, screen calls and send texts from your number from Google Voice.
All calls, except international ones, use Sprint’s network so you still get the benefit of reliable call quality. International calls are routed through Google’s pre-paid, low-rate service.
For those with existing Google Voice numbers — or those like me who have already ported over a number to Google Voice, the process works the opposite way.
Namely, your Google Voice number largely becomes your cellphone’s number. Once you turn the feature on, all your outgoing calls and texts from your Sprint phone automatically use your Google Voice number.
Previously, if you wanted this, you had to set Google Voice for this and use the Google Voice app to send text messages. Now any text-message program will send out SMSes using your Google Voice number.
Even better, all calls use your Google Voice number — but you will no longer use Google Voice’s servers to make domestic calls. Previously, Google Voice calls worked much like a calling card, adding an intermediate hop that too often added static to the call.
With the integration, domestic calls sound clearer using only Sprint’s network. And since these calls go through Sprint, you get the benefit of Sprint’s free mobile-to-mobile calls for its smartphone plans — which isn’t possible for those using the Google Voice app.
International calls will, however, automatically go through Google Voice, using its low, pre-paid rates.
Voicemail is now natively handled by Google Voice, but the default voicemail app won’t show them. You’ll have to find them in the Google Voice app.
This introduces the one of the oddnesses for existing users turning this on. You’ll have to make changes to your Google Voice app. The easiest way to do this is to switch this on for your phone on the Google Voice webpage, then uninstall the Google Voice app from your phone, then re-install it.
This will keep your phone from continuing to make calls through Google Voice’s servers.
The other big issue for existing Google Voice users? MMS, which is basically text messages with photos.
Google Voice numbers can not accept MMS messages. Any MMS sent to your Google Voice number will disappear into the digital dead-letter office, with no notice to the sender or recipient.
You can send an MMS from a Sprint-Google Voice phone through the native text-message app, but it will be sent out showing your Sprint number, not your Google Voice number. You can receive MMSes, but also only if people send it to your Sprint number. For new users turning their Sprint number into their Google number, however, sending and receiving MMSes is just fine.
But given that the real point of Google Voice is that people only need to use one number for you, this is a big drawback for current Google Voice users.
There’s also something oddly unfair for Google Voice users who pined so long to port their number from their cellphone to Google Voice, which didn’t happen until late last year. Now that decision, which cost $20 and time on the phone with a carrier, penalizes existing users. My colleague David Kravets and I would both love the option to port our numbers back to Sprint, and a refund wouldn’t be bad either.
One other annoyance: Gmail allows you to call out using your Google Voice number, and lets you send SMSes from Google Chat. However, those SMSes don’t come from your Google Voice number. To use your Google Voice number for SMSes sent from Gmail, you have to set Voice to forward SMSes to your e-mail and then reply to them as if they were e-mails. Alternately, you can open Google.com/voice and send SMSes from there — but that shouldn’t be necessary.
All-in-all, though, the new Sprint integration is a no-brainer for existing and non-Google Voice users. The integration largely hides the mechanics of Google Voice while making your phone life much more feature-rich.
And unlike porting your number to Google Voice, it’s simple to turn on and easily reversible if you find you don’t like the service or get creeped out by having Google take over another part of your information life.
Photo: rcastag/flickr
Ryan Singel covers tech policy, broadband, search and social networking for Wired.com.Follow @rsingel and @epicenterblog on Twitter.
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