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Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

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Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#141
post #72

Introducing 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

Fair enough. They were from my desktop only or with a third-party app on my iPhone.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#142
post #6

According 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 don't understand. I already use Hangouts to make free calls on iOS.

Yes, and when it was announced for iOS last year, they said the Hangouts-Voice integration on Android was "coming soon". It seemed to have been planned for Google I/O this year, but they ended up having it delayed until now for some reason.

Oh well, their Android and iOS Hangouts apps are now mostly at parity now.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#144
post #6

According 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…

According to that thread this update breaks GV functionality (texting from GV website and texting from Hangouts). Seeing as texting from the webapp is the only reason I even have GV, looks like i'll be ditching that number once they kick everyone off GV for good.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#146
It also looks like they finally updated Google Voice for iOS 7. You know, a week before iOS 8 is released.

Hey I'm happy though! This means all my apps finally have the design of iOS 7.

I hope they have fixed the notification bug that plagued the previous version.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The call out from Gmail is still present.

Good to know. I still have Google Voice, but I've more or less stopped paying attention to its development... but maybe I'll use that call-from-Gmail feature. iOS client is abandoned (it's the only app I have that hasn't been updated for iOS 7), and Google blocked access for the 3rd party clients (killing GrowlVoice, which was better than any of Google's clients, and which I paid money for). Not to mention MMS still…

Missed my window to edit parent, but the iPhone client finally got an iOS 7 update today, alongside the new version of hangouts. Maybe I won't write it off yet after all. Yay!

EDIT: New version is designed for tall screens, and does not hold up well on the 4S and earlier.

http://i.imgur.com/l3heAjJ.png

The keyboard and input box are basically a fixed size, and then out of the leftover space they've used more than 2/3s to tell me who I'm talking to (twice). The remaining little stripe has enough room to display a single line text, or two if you don't mind the name/time getting chopped off.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#148
post #42
post #41

I tried to look at the details but couldn't find out, so may be someone has the answer. Do I need to have a google+ account to use hangout or my gmail address is fine ? I just don't want a g+ account and don't want to be tricked into creating one by mistake.

I'm not sure I understand why you don't want your account to have a private G+ page. Why would you miss out on a service you like because you don't want to have to not use another one?

Because I don't like to feel forced to create an account for a company to simply inflate their number of user for a service a absolutely don't want to use (G+). I have no FB, no twitter and no G+ as a personal choice. If hangout requires G+ then I'll pass. I'm happy to pay for a service with dollars but not with my personal data.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#149
post #41

I tried to look at the details but couldn't find out, so may be someone has the answer. Do I need to have a google+ account to use hangout or my gmail address is fine ? I just don't want a g+ account and don't want to be tricked into creating one by mistake.

Last time I checked Hangouts required G+. It was the only reason I kept my G+ account.

Thanks.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#150
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Video chat options in general frustrate me to no end. Skype - at least on Linux - have steadily dropped in quality over the last few years (the old cynic in me wants to blame MS for no particular reason). Back in 2006-2007 I used Skype video chats daily with few issues between the UK and California. These days I have problems getting it to work reliably within London, and have given up on it to let my son talk to his…

I'll be down-voted, although I solved the problem with: .. FaceTime. If you don't have a mac you can get a ipod touch. That's what I use to talk with my family USA->Italy. Is the only thing I found that is reliable and has a quite good quality.
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