Google Voice comes to iPhone, Palm Pre


27 Jan 2010

Google has today made available a new web app for users of its Voice service, accessible through both the iPhone and Palm WebOS devices like the Pre.

Unlike the Google Voice iPhone app, this is based on HTML5 and does not require a download but rather is accessed over the web, a development Google has talked about in the past few weeks, known as the iterative web app.

“One of the great benefits of web applications is that you don’t need to download and install an app on your phone,” said Marcus Foster, product manager, and David Singleton, engineering manager, on the Google Mobile Blog.

What Google Voice does

Google Voice was launched on 11 March, 2009, and is a unified comms service that allows the user to have one single number that can be used as a contact point to several other numbers, with all this managed and configured within a Gmail-like web application.

There are also additional features, such as voice-to-text transcription of phone messages.

Today’s new web application has features such as ‘Dialer’, ‘Compose SMS’, ‘Inbox’ and ‘Contacts’, which can be made into shortcuts on the iPhone or Palm Pre home screen and are web-based (VoIP) and thus cheaper than carrier calls, hence the ruckus from UC carriers last year.

“And because the Google Voice web app uses advanced features of modern HTML5 browsers, it offers native app-like performance and speed,” added Foster and Singleton.

Unfortunately, you need a Google Voice account to use these features and right now this is available in the US alone by invite only.

By Marie Boran

Photo: The Google Voice iPhone app is accessed over the web