I’ve been a Google Voice (“GV”) user since it was GrandCentral and with all the buzz lately about Google Voice apps returning to the iOS app store, I’ve been pretty excited to try out the new native apps.
As I was waiting, over the weekend, for Sean Kovas’ GV Mobile + app to hit the app store, I read in his Twitter feed that his app didn’t work with Google Account multiple sign in. I use multiple sign in because my GV account is associated with my personal Gmail account and my main email runs on a separate Google Apps account, and I didn’t want to disable this feature, disrupting my workflow, just to try GV Mobile +.
So, I figured I’d wait for an update and in the meantime started looking around for other solutions.
I came across Black Swan from VoiceCentral which runs on HTML5 and appears to be a major improvement over the Google Voice mobile website, for a number of reasons, including that it gives you a choice of which number to ring back on when placing a call.
This got me thinking about free SIP services and wondering if I could set things up to make free calls from my iPhone. Well, you can.
With this set up, you will use the Black Swan iPhone app to initiate a call that will ring back on the Whistle iPhone app (for free) and then be put through to the party you are calling.
Step 1:
Get a Google Voice account.
Step 2:
Install the VoiceCentral Black Swan “app” on your iPhone.
There is a free version and a premium ($6/year) version, I opted for the free version. For flexibility, it important to configure VoiceCentral to let you choose which number to call back on. This is under Settings, Call Back which should be set to “Ask every time”. Dialing Method (just below) should be set to “Call Back”. Be sure to bookmark it on your Home Screen.
Step 3:
Download the Whistle iPhone app and sign up for a phone number/log into the app. Accept the request to enable on push notifications, then close out of the Whistle app (exit the app, then double click the iPhone home button then press your finger on the Whistle icon until the minus sign appears, then tap on the minus sign). Then relaunch the Whistle app. This step will make sure that push notifications are working when you place a call. Under this configuration, Whistle, which is ad-supported, only receives calls, so you don’t end up hearing the ads.
Step 4:
Associate your Whistle phone number with your Google Voice Account (inside Google Voice under Settings, Voice, Settings, Phones). When you do this, the call should ring on your iPhone via the Whistle app. Press “answer” and then key in the two digit code supplied by Google Voice.
Now to place a call:
Launch the VoiceCentral app, and place a call either from Contacts or the Keypad. When the “Select Call back Number” dialogue box opens, tap on your Whistle phone number.
Next a Whistle dialogue box should open giving you the option to answer. Tap answer and the call should go go through, for free.
No sooner than I posted this, someone rang my Google Voice number and I learned, quite obviously, that this also work for incoming calls. Over wifi the quality seemed quite good.
I look forward to testing this out with GV Mobile + once the multiple sign in issue is resolved.
rolling on chrome 