Google Voice Abilities - Enhance your Phone Capabilities - The Real deal - Hands On

Google Voice has been talked about for quite some time, but ModdedLife got a beta invitation to test it out! Not only is it fancy and unique, it has some hidden features. Join us as we overview Google Voice.

Before we get started, if you are not familiar with what Google Voice is, click here for our article about the Google Voice Capabilities. Google Voice allows you to connect and phone to the internet and even allows you to customize a series of voicemail messages based on who’s calling you. Voicemails are all saved online, as well as converted to text and sent to your phone and email.

The Dislikes:

As I started messing around with Google Voice, it was very unique, but I noticed many bugs and disappointments. I will start with the bugs and disappointments, but don’t get discouraged by them, there really are many amazing features included. The first thing I noticed as soon as I activated Google Voice on my Blackberry was that it deletes your existing voicemail message, as well as your voicemail access number. Your voicemail access number is is usually dialing either your mobile number, or the voicemail speed dial, which is usually just the number 1. Google Voice completely deactivates your mobile carrier’s voicemail box and greeting message. I tried checking my voicemail by just using the usual speed dial, but it plays the operator message for dialing an invalid number.

The feature I was most excited about was the voicemail to text message conversion. I tested this by calling my cell phone, from my cellphone. Since Google Voice deactivates your carrier’s voicemail, you can actually call your own phone and even leave a message to yourself. Anyways, I called and left myself a message for testing purposes, and I was shocked with the outcome. Almost instantly after I finished recording my message, I got a text from my Google Number. I read the text, but it made so sense. It was such a random text that I thought it was just an advertisement attached to my Google Number. This text was actually the instant conversion from my voicemail to a text message. Google Voice even detects the mumbling that I added to my voicemail test, but it tries to make sense of it and converts it into words, even though I didn’t even mumble any actual words.

I started toying around with the Google Voice page linked with my phone and Google Number. I liked how I could view all of my messages from my computer, but I soon noticed even more bugs with Google Voice. The visual voicemail box is similar to the Gmail inbox, except it displays the phone number of the sender. Although Google Voice doesn’t sync with your contacts, you can easily add a name to the phone number of the sender. The interface has a play button so that you can “play” your voicemails from the Google Voice page. The problems I experienced with the play button were very disappointing. Every time I hit play, I heard no sound. I thought this problem was due to me using Safari 5, which is the newest browser from Apple, so I thought that maybe it was just a bug with the browser. I tried using Firefox and even Internet Explorer on my other computer, with the same results of no playback. Hours later, listening to my voicemails online worked fine. Google was probably just working on something and it temporarily deactivated streaming. It has worked fine since.

The Likes:

You’re probably thinking that i’m being biased and totally trashing Google Voice, but the dislikes was just an overall test with my experiences with Google Voice. Voice is still in Beta invite-only testing, which means that it still has many bugs and problems. The dislikes list is much longer because Google Voice is not final yet and it is bound to not work properly.

A nice feature with Google Voice is the multiple phones capability. Depending on who’s calling, you can choose which phones ring. You can set it up so every time your mom calls you, it rings your home phone, mobile phone, and work phone. If you don’t make it to one of your phones in time, you can have Voice set specific voicemail messages for that caller.

Even though there were a lot of features to Google Voice that have bugs, there are many great benefits to using Google Voice. To online interface is very convenient and is great for keeping your messages organized. You can view all of your voicemails by the date they were created, who left the voicemail, their location, and the phone number they used. With the Google Voice page, you can also save or delete the voicemails in your inbox. Like I said earlier, the Voice interface is very similar to the Gmail interface. It provides you with a history of your voicemails and missed calls, as well as a list of your contacts.

This Hub was brought to you By ModdedLife.Com

Follow us on Twitter!