Rob's Rants

My Dash 3G is currently running Windows Mobile 6.5. The smartphone version — it’s not a touchscreen device. Since I’ve been using Google Voice I wanted a client or dialer on the phone that would seamlessly integrate with the phone’s normal calling function. I’ve tried several to this point and none is really satisfactory.

Making Google Voice Calls

There are really two ways to initiate a Google Voice call — via telephone or via the internet. In the phone-based method, you call your own Google Voice number and then enter your PIN and elect to make a call. You enter the number to dial and Google connects the call. In the internet version, you navigate to the Google Voice web page, log in, enter the number to dial and tell Google which of your phone numbers you wish to use for the call. Google completes the call and then rings your designated phone.

All of the Windows Mobile programs out there use one or a combination of these methods to make Google Voice calls.

GV Dialer

Confirmed 10/26/2009: the GV Dialer author has abandoned the project and left current users hanging out to dry. See this blog post and this screen:

F' You GV Dialer Users!

It’s a shame too, because GV Dialer was probably the best Windows Mobile client out there.
Google doesn’t offer a dialing app for Windows Mobile yet so I was forced to look for 3rd party apps. The first that I found and tried was GV Dialer. And frankly I liked it. GV Dialer was simple: it inserted itself in the native Windows dialer so that whenever you initiated a phone call via any of the normal methods, you would be prompted whether you wanted to use your normal phone or Google Voice (it could also be set to always use one or the other). GV Dialer would then call your Google voice number and automatically enter the digits to work through the Google menu and initiate your call. It was very simple and it worked seamlessly. I liked it. The problem? It seems like the author stopped development abruptly before my trial expired and I can’t activate it to a full license. When you go to their website now, all you get is this:

No GV Dialer For You!!

Based on the blog on the site, I’ll bet that having the iPhone version pulled from the App Store killed any hope of actually making money so the author abandoned it. But it’s a pretty shitty thing to do to not even let people activate versions they already have. So I’m, stuck with a no longer functioning version of a program I liked and I had to start all over again.

iDialer

iDialer is a popular dialer replacement for Windows Mobile, originating (like so many things) on XDA-Developers, but now hosted on its own page. Upgraded or hacked dialers are popular with the touchscreen smartphone people (for reasons totally lost on me — I’ve never seen a single one that really offers much more than the standard dialer, with the exception of the Google Voice Support in iDialer) and iDialer is one of the more popular ones available. The new integrated Google Voice support is particularly cool. The problem of course is that the author wrote it for touchscreen devices only, so it works poorly at best on the Dash 3G. And, like most hacked dialers, it doesn’t replace the native dialer, so you have to start the dialer separately to use it which seems ridiculous to me. Nonetheless, a few users swear by it, even for non-touchscreen phones (see the second post of  this thread for example).

The main advantage of iDialer is that it can use both the dial-up and internet methods of initiating a Google Voice call. In some cases, the internet method is faster since there are fewer digits to input. But that isn’t nearly enough to overcome the limitations of trying to use this touchscreen app on my non-touchscreen device. So I gave up after only one day.

GVoice Dialer

That leaves GVoice Dialer as the client I am currently using. It works similarly to GV Dialer only not as seamlessly. For GVoice Dialer you need to initiate a call by starting the app first. Then you can select a number from your address book and initiate a Google Voice call. This is one extra step than GV Dialer required, but I guess it’s better than nothing. To speed up the process I assigned GVoice Dialer to a speed dial key on my phone so I can start the app quickly and then quickly jump to my address book.

The Ideal Program

What would be the ideal Google Voice client for me? First and foremost it would integrate with the native dialing functionality. That means absolutely no starting of any extra programs before initiating a call. One should be able to browse the native address book or type a number as normal and then be prompted whether to make a normal call of a Google Voice call. The program should also have a blacklist and whitelist, so you could designate numbers to always use Google Voice or never use Google Voice. If someone could do that I’d pay good money for it.

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Related posts:

1. Google Voice Web App for Windows Mobile
2. Another Windows Mobile Dialing Option for Google Voice
3. Another Google Voice Option for Win Mo and My GVoice Dialer Issue
4. Replacing Mobile Phone Voicemail With Google Voice
5. Life With Google Voice – The Multiple Voicemail Issue