I prefer to read my voicemails, so I love Google Voice. But everybody already knows my iPhone’s number, and that’s the one that shows up in their caller ID. Is there another app that will transcribe my iPhone’s voicemail messages?
Yes, you can actually use Google Voice to transcribe your iPhone’s voicemails without giving out a different phone number to your friends. All cell phone companies provide a feature called “conditional call forwarding” that forwards your incoming calls to another number after you fail to answer the call but before it goes to your cell phone’s voicemail. If you set up your iPhone’s conditional call forwarding to go to your Google Voice number, then Google Voice will take the message—and transcribe it.
Sure, you can have all your iPhone’s voicemail messages transcribed for you, but Google’s results may be more comedic than useful.
Let’s say that your Google Voice number is 323-555-1212. To turn on conditional call forwarding on your iPhone, go to your iPhone’s keypad. If you’re with AT&T, dial *004*13235551212# then press the green Call button. To turn it off, dial ##004# and press Call. On a Verizon iPhone, enter *713235551212 and press Call. To turn it off, dial *73 and press Call. Once you enable conditional call forwarding, new voicemails will no longer show up on your iPhone’s visual voicemail screen, but you can access them via email, the free Google Voice app, and google.com/voice.
One more thing: while Google Voice is free, other fee-based companies offer voicemail-to-text transcriptions as well, including YouMail.com, Jott.com, and PhoneTag.com. Compare their features and better transcription accuracy to see if you’d rather use one of their services instead of Google Voice.
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the-worm-in-the...
April 07, 2011 at 4:36pm
>> "Once you enable conditional call forwarding, new voicemails will no longer show up on your iPhone’s visual voicemail screen..."
This is kind of ambiguously stated... obviously this will disable your provider's native visual voicemail system (bypassing it altogether) while CCF is active... but as soon as you cut it off, does visual voicemail return to normal working condition, or is this something that once you change it once, you've gotta get the provider to re-program the phone to get visual voicemail working natively on your phone again, etc?
I'd like to try this out, but then again... I don't want to risk screwing up my normal VV system and then having to deal with... going through what it takes to fix it.
I see no reason it would botch the normal visual voicemail up, but I need some re-assurance from you guys before I risk it!
(And the "risk" is not in can it be fixed... the "risk" lies in the potential hours wasted on the phone or in person with confused salespeople who have no idea what I'm talking about, much less how to fix it. That risk...)
[edit: I looked for that Tango app you mentioned, but there's like 40 of them. The closest guess I could come to was "Tango Video Calls"? Is this the one you were referring to in your comment?]
xtrememelon
March 29, 2011 at 4:07pm
There is an app called Tango which is free and does the same thing without all of the hassle! I showed all of my family and they claim that they found it first! haha! Hope this helped!
