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Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

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Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#201

Post by fooqux »

higherpurpose wrote: post #96
cantbecool wrote: post #47

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.

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.

If it's any consolation, the new version of it released yesterday seems to have been optimized a lot more than the previous versions. Despite the added functionality, it feels a lot snappier. This is on a Nexus 5, not sure about other/older hardware.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#202

Post by tootie »

chakalakasp wrote: post #20

This has been available on iOS for a long time, which I found to be really, really strange, given that you would think Android would be the platform where they'd want to put their more advanced features. It isn't half bad, though -- the call quality, even when the call terminates in an actual phone number, exceeds that of cellular by a good margin, due to what I assume is a much better bitrate being used. And it work…

Voice calls via hangouts has been possible on android this whole time too. Just start a video call, then turn off video and speaker. This should have been a trivial addition years ago. I can only assume it was omitted for some business reason.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#203

Post by dharma1 »

cbr wrote: post #197
dharma1 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is why: http://www.androidcentral.com/google-moves-hangouts-vp8-offe... Instead of hardware accelerated h264 (almost all chipsets have hardware decoding/encoding of h264), they use their own VP8/9 - which is decoding/encoding on CPU Also the reason why Google Glass can't do Hangouts - not powerful enough for software encoding. They should just use h264.

patents

is it that costly really? rest of the world is using h264 pretty much everywhere

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#204

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

Revex wrote: post #165
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #7

Finally. Now when I'm in my basement I can at least wifi-call my family from my cellphone instead of having to open up my damn laptop to call from a Chrome gmail browser tab.

You could have been doing this for some time now. I have by using something like TalkATone or GrooveIp.

I did, in fact, use one of them for some time. Then it was discontinued, because Google killed the ability to utilize the number through their API.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#205

Post by hobarrera »

gk1 wrote: post #15
smeyer wrote: post #3

Is this still possible from gchat? That used to be (and possibly still is) an option if I recall correctly.

Gchat is now called Hangouts.

No, Hangouts is a replacement for Gchat, with a different feature set. There are some new features, but communication with non-google XMPP users is being dropped (so as to lock in users as much as possible). That's one a the main reasons mean people avoid it - since it would mean loosing contact with many users.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#206

Post by pbreit »

untog wrote: 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…

Why has Google had such a miserable time implementing a usable voice calling service? It's seems relatively straightforward (on the front-end, at least) and yet we have a stream of poorly conceived offerings.

And what a stupid name for a core communications platform.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#207

Post by pbreit »

DAddYE wrote: post #150
vidarh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is what's so annoying about Apple: why no Android client? How can you hope to have a communications platform that is so severely constrained? That's why so few here barely even know about Facetime. You can't invest in it because it's so limited.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#208

Post by fps »

pbreit wrote: post #206
untog wrote: 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…

Why has Google had such a miserable time implementing a usable voice calling service? It's seems relatively straightforward (on the front-end, at least) and yet we have a stream of poorly conceived offerings. And what a stupid name for a core communications platform.

Google Talk and Google Voice in Gmail were/are a great voice calling service. Hangouts is still missing a ton of features compared to google talk, although this feature brings back one of them. I still have Hangouts disabled in favor of the old Google Talk interface on my main Gmail account so that I can see a buddy list, see logged in status, and make phone calls.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#209

Post by pbreit »

fps wrote: post #208
pbreit wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why has Google had such a miserable time implementing a usable voice calling service? It's seems relatively straightforward (on the front-end, at least) and yet we have a stream of poorly conceived offerings. And what a stupid name for a core communications platform.

Google Talk and Google Voice in Gmail were/are a great voice calling service. Hangouts is still missing a ton of features compared to google talk, although this feature brings back one of them. I still have Hangouts disabled in favor of the old Google Talk interface on my main Gmail account so that I can see a buddy list, see logged in status, and make phone calls.

The gmail stuff is too ephemeral for me. Needs to be an app.

I don't think audio/video goes with email/chat. I think that's there's where Skype might have messed up and ceded mobile to other players.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#210

Post by jodrellblank »

pbreit wrote: post #207
DAddYE wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is what's so annoying about Apple: why no Android client? How can you hope to have a communications platform that is so severely constrained? That's why so few here barely even know about Facetime. You can't invest in it because it's so limited.

'hope to'? They don't hope to, it exists. 15-20 million FaceTime calls every day: http://www.macrumors.com/2014/02/28/apple-40-billion-imessag...
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