Not in the UK as per usual. Thanks Google.
Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
91–100 of 212 posts
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#92According to /r/android this also finally brings Google Voice into Hangouts: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2fz6hh/hangouts_and... I haven't seen the update yet to try it, but am hoping I do soon. This is long, long overdue. All this said - Hangouts on desktop is still so much worse than GChat was - and GChat had free calls too. I'd type a number, two seconds later it would be ringing in the bottom right co…
Worse, to receive calls via Hangouts (web browser) you have to join Google+ which is complete b.s. If there's anything worse than Hangouts it's Google+. At least Hangouts is slowly getting better.
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#93Goodbye Skype! You won't be missed.
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#94Introducing the simple rebranding/reworking of Google Voice into Hangouts. (the same 'free calls' have been on Google Voice for years)
Google Voice has not made VOIP calls from your phone. This is a new feature. Before, it made calls with your google voice number but using your phone's minutes
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#95I was really hoping the Google Voice app for iOS would get another update, but that seems even more unlikely now.
Sadly, I cannot use my main gmail account with hangouts, as I don't want to create a google+ account for it. Oh well.
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#96According to /r/android this also finally brings Google Voice into Hangouts: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2fz6hh/hangouts_and... I haven't seen the update yet to try it, but am hoping I do soon. This is long, long overdue. All this said - Hangouts on desktop is still so much worse than GChat was - and GChat had free calls too. I'd type a number, two seconds later it would be ringing in the bottom right co…
I stand 100% behind your statement. I can't stand to use Hangouts. I remember when you could simply have a video chat plugin installed in Google Chat with HD feature enabled in labs and CPU usage wouldn't be a quarter what a video chat in Hangouts is now. I dream that they still had the option to use the older video chat functionality.
The Hangouts app must be built by Google's worst engineering team. It's terrible on mobile, too. The Play Store and maybe Youtube are probably slower than it, but at least those have an excuse: heavy content/graphics. What's Hangouts' excuse? A few lines of text on the screen and some tiny icons? It's a chat app...it's supposed to be fast, not super slow.
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#97This might be premature. I still can't use Hangouts to make voice-only calls, and I end up going back to its predecessor over and over.
When I try to use Hangouts for ordinary phone calls, the system assumes I want a video chat, and can't seem to understand that I want to use my USB headset, not the microphone on the video camera and the system speakers, for a voice-only call. I've never been able to train the system to default to the USB headset and leave the video camera out of the equation.
I'm going to try the new version on principle, but I have serious doubts.
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#98According to /r/android this also finally brings Google Voice into Hangouts: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2fz6hh/hangouts_and... I haven't seen the update yet to try it, but am hoping I do soon. This is long, long overdue. All this said - Hangouts on desktop is still so much worse than GChat was - and GChat had free calls too. I'd type a number, two seconds later it would be ringing in the bottom right co…
Somewhat hilariously this change stops any of the text messages from reaching the google voice web app in favor of hangouts (the web app being basically it's only redeeming quality at this point) and there appears to be some weird behavior when texting people through hangouts.
The webapp was the only reason I still bothered to use GV since it's felt like it's been abandoned for years now. It's frustrating how great this could have been especially with how early it originally came out, but I don't think it's worth it anymore - still no MMS (therefore no groupchat support). No notice of any of those failing either.
People are better off just using iMessage even though it isn't cross platform than dealing with this.
The two benefits I can still think of are that it's easy to switch carriers/numbers since your GV number is an abstraction and if you're out of the country temporarily you can still get texts to your American GV number. Really though FB/Whatsapp and a billion other widely used chat solutions have solved this and people in the US don't switch networks/numbers that often.
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#99According to /r/android this also finally brings Google Voice into Hangouts: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2fz6hh/hangouts_and... I haven't seen the update yet to try it, but am hoping I do soon. This is long, long overdue. All this said - Hangouts on desktop is still so much worse than GChat was - and GChat had free calls too. I'd type a number, two seconds later it would be ringing in the bottom right co…
And it is it holistically proprietary inoperable bullshit now. Your messages still get broadcast through their XMPP infrastructure (for now) so I can still use Telepathy with their services, but the UX is shit because Jingle broke amongst other things.
Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts
#100Shameless plug: if anyone is interested in helping a startup test out their VoIP infrastructure, let me know (email in profile) and I'll hook you up with a free SIP trunk you can use for a while for both domestic and international calls. Conversational traffic only please, no automated dialers of any kind. To be used with any SIP client of your choice.