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Updates to our Google Voice apps

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Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#351
post #28

I've been a Google Voice user for 6-7 years. It became more important to me 5 years ago when I moved to the UK and ported my mobile number to GV. It's not been very pretty. We were thrown a lifeline with the Google Hangouts app taking over for the absolutely-awful Google Voice app. One of the most frustrating things about GV is that for certain SMS providers, it fails the "is this a USA number test" or "can we SMS to…

I just ran into the "this isn't a phone number" issue with Telegram this morning. It claims my Google Voice (well really Project Fi now) number is a VOIP number, so I can't use it :(.

Yeah, I had to create my account with my "real number", and because I don't give that one out, I have to initiate chats with everyone on Telegram.

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#352
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, google will let you upload 50,000 songs for free over google music, so even that excuse doesn't hold water, but I'm sure you'll find another reason to complain. I mean, not OP here, but my music library is ~140 GB, and I don't think it's unreasonable to want to have that available without internet access. I run with a 64gb iPhone, so I'm definitely not the guy arguing for massive SD cards on everything,…

They know what they are doing. The whole point is to get you to use their cloud services. But now, if you are a Project Fi user, they are charging for data access to your own content you upload to Play Music. So now I am back to managing music files on my device and changing them out and feeling like I jumped 10 years back to the past.

Right, which is why in every google app they give you the option to cache songs offline, and set your phone to only play streaming music while on wifi. They're TOTALLY trying to get you to spend more on data - which they make basically nothing off of. That's as ridiculous as saying they intentionally break android to have you buy a new phone to make the whopping .75 per handset.

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you unregister your number from iMessages, group texts switch over from iMessages to non-iMessage as soon as you send a message that has a member in it that is no longer iMessage.

That's not true. Everyone in the thread has to delete the thread and create a new one before new messages will go to an iMessage-deactivated number.

This has not been my experience. I have some very long running group messages that switched over automatically when my brother switched from iPhone to Android.

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#354

If you'd like to better understand the background behind the new Google Voice apps, check out my G+ post here. https://plus.google.com/+AlexWiesen/posts/EEVjRbbKz65

Note to HN readers: This is a Google Voice team member providing some background information on how the new apps came about.

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#355

I'm really happy they're showing Google Voice some love. It's certainly been neglected over the years, but despite that I've stuck with it (all the way since the GrandCentral days) because the alternative is so much worse. I've changed phone providers numerous times and also travel internationally: the fact that each of these moves would've otherwise required either complex number porting or letting people know about…

Hi, sounds like you have experience with Google voice and international numbers. I haven't tried in a long time, but does google voice support forwarding to international number?

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#356

I'm really happy they're showing Google Voice some love. It's certainly been neglected over the years, but despite that I've stuck with it (all the way since the GrandCentral days) because the alternative is so much worse. I've changed phone providers numerous times and also travel internationally: the fact that each of these moves would've otherwise required either complex number porting or letting people know about…

Hi, sounds like you have experience with Google voice and international numbers. I haven't tried in a long time, but does google voice support forwarding to international number?

I've never tried, since when I'm traveling internationally I always have data and just use the Hangouts app. The important part is it's totally seamless: contacts don't need to know I'm traveling and I avoid any huge roaming fees.

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#357
post #231
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to hear what issues you have with Apple's cloud services. I, personally, have had no problems, but am definitely curious.

i would not trust any apple service to host/preserve my images. just have had way too many instances where images just disappear. and afaik they still haven't really explained the connection between all the celebrity phones being hacked when they were all using icloud (if someone has a link that'd be nice)

To add to this, Apple also doesn't bother to make it clear to users that there are limitations to backing up their photos using iCloud. You can get pictures out of Photo Stream whenever but that's only the last 1000 photos or 30 days. For Camera roll that actually stores the backup of all of your photos, you can only access your backup if you restore it to a new or reset device. If you get a new iPhone and don't immediately restore from iCloud then too bad, you either have to wipe your new iDevice or buy a new one in order to get to your backup.

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a die-hard Google user/fanboy until about a year and a half ago. I was a Fi user, Voice user (before Fi), Hangouts, Nexus buyer, you name it (I even had a Google TV and almost bought an OnHub). I bailed on it all when I realized that Google has absolutely no long-term vision or desire to support what they produce. I went to an iPhone and despite Apple's warts, it's a night-and-day experience. I'll never again t…

I am a Google Fi user, the Pixel is by far the best phone I have ever owned, and I have zero complaints so far. To contact customer service, if I ever need to, it takes less than 10 seconds. I almost always have service, if I don't have tower service I swap to WiFi and have the same and full capabilities. I dont have any issues as it stands, though I have been using Google products since 1997 and might be a bit of a…

You can contact customer service right now because they're promoting the heck out of Pixel, and are happy to sink lots of resources into it.

Once it becomes a legacy party of Google (hey, remember the original Pixel that Google made? The premium laptop that they no longer support at all? I own it.), chances are they'll drop all that support, just like everything else at Google.

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, sounds like you have experience with Google voice and international numbers. I haven't tried in a long time, but does google voice support forwarding to international number?

I've never tried, since when I'm traveling internationally I always have data and just use the Hangouts app. The important part is it's totally seamless: contacts don't need to know I'm traveling and I avoid any huge roaming fees.

Got it. Thanks.

Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about where I am with this. I got started with GV back when carriers were charging $0.25/each to send or receive texts, and eventually paid Google $20 to port my old AT&T number into their system. Then Google stopped developing the GV app and I switched from iOS to Android to get the Hangouts Dialer integration. With the Hangouts integration instead of a real GV app, they apparently threw away the spam reporti…

> I got started with GV back when carriers were charging $0.25/each to send or receive texts What? Unlimited texting has been included in every phone plan I've ever had since the first iPhone or earlier, before Google Voice existed.

> every phone plan I've ever had since the first iPhone

Exactly... You realize there was a time before then, right?

In the mid 2000s, texts cost between 10-20c to send, unless you bought a bundled plan, which weren't actually that common then, and even then you were limited to usually 200 texts/mo.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/aboutus/mission/viewpoint...

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