Rob's Rants

I’ve written about GVoiceDialer before, and in spite of some problems, I’ve continued to use it, since it’s really the only Google Voice client available for non-touchscreen Windows Mobile phones.

However, I was growing increasingly frustrated with it because it would frequently fail to complete my calls. Usually the Google computerized voice would indicate that invalid keys had been pressed or some other error would occur. It was very unreliable. Well it finally occurred to me the other day what was happening. Most of the time when I had trouble, I was either outside in Boston, or on a train. When it worked, I was either at home or in my office. So I attributed the issue to signal strength. Maybe I wasn’t getting more than 1 bar when outside and the keys weren’t registering correctly.

In reality — it is the background noise! My house and office are quiet. Other locations where I typically use it aren’t . And I discovered that the background noise often prevents the Google system from recognizing the DTMF tones correctly. So the trick is to mute your phone as soon as GVoiceDialer starts the call and unmute once you hear the “this is a free call” announcement from Google. Since I’ve started this trick, GVoiceDialer has proven very reliable, regardless of where I use it.

This should be a feature built into the next version (assuming there is a next version). Muting of the phone’s mic when dialing.

But for now, it works much better if I remember to mute the phone.

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2. Google Voice – Fixing the Multiple Voicemail Issue
3. Replacing Mobile Phone Voicemail With Google Voice
4. Another Google Voice Option for Win Mo and My GVoice Dialer Issue
5. Life With Google Voice – The Multiple Voicemail Issue