Best Phone to use With Google Voice App? Does it Matter in a Two Horse Race?

Google Voice (formerly GrandCentral) lets you associate your current personal phone numbers with your Google Voice number. If you do that people calling your Google Voice phone number will be routed to one or more of your “real” phone numbers. Calling my Google Voice number, for example, rings both the phone in my office and my cell phone. You can also create schedules to direct the service when it can call your “real” numbers. This is the ultimate in number portability. Just give it once and attach phone numbers to it at will. It is the only number people need to know to call you. There is one “gotcha”. If a call goes to your Google Voice voicemail (which can do things like transcribe voice messages to text), you may want to call back the person who left the voice mail. But, if you call back from your cell, home, or office phone, that is the Caller ID number that the person will see. It would be better (and less confusing for the person who called you) to see your Google Voice number instead.

Google developed apps for its Android platform, BlackBerry and the iPhone that lets you call someone in a way that displays your Google Voice phone number instead of your “real” number to solve this issue. However, Apple has not allowed this app into their iTunes App Store. So, only the Android and BlackBerry versions are currently available. So, I was kind of amused to read this CNET News piece titled…

What’s the best phone for Google Voice?

…since this is a two-horse race. And, the declared winner won’t surprise anyone: Android was declared as being the best phone platform for using Google Voice with the Google Voice App.

The CNET article does note that there is a $9.99 third party app that works with Google Voice named…

GVdialer

This product has versions available for the iPhone (pulled from the App Store), Nokia smarthones, and Windows Mobile smartphones. Interestingly, it also has versions for Android and BlackBerry.a

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