Even though we are in the world of instant messaging, Twitter, and text messages, voice calls are still the best way to share your ideas quickly and efficiently. Not only are you able to instantly grasp the context of words, but you are also able to speak replies quicker than you can type. However, there is a major flaw with voice calls: The two parties must be available at the same time.
Enter Voxer. This application for iOS devices mixes the best of voice calls and text messaging. With the app, you can send a voice note to someone, and at their convenience, they can listen to it and send back a reply. Best of all, you can do this for free and you don't need any text messaging plan.
- Voxer for iOS (Free)
- Free Voxer account
The first step in communicating with Voxer is to find friends to communicate with. After signing into your Voxer account in the application, tap the Menu button (in the upper-right corner), and then tap the Find Friends button.
In this view, you will automatically see all of the people in your address book that have signed up for a Voxer account. If you don’t see someone on this list, tap Invite Friends to send an invite message to someone via text message.
Once your friend has accepted your invitation, or has been added to your Voxer list by some other means, you can begin to chat with them by tapping their name in your Voxer list.
While in the chat view, you can send a photo or a text message by tapping the buttons corresponding to those options at the bottom of the screen. To send a voice message, tap and hold on the Hold and Talk button. As long as you hold that button down, anything picked up by the microphone will be instantly recorded and sent to the recipient.
To listen to a voice message that was sent to you, go into the chat view, and tap on the timeline of any of the voice messages in the list.
When you do this, the message will automatically begin playing. You have standard controls for going back, play/pause, and skipping to the next message. You can also speed up the message playback by tapping the small rabbit in the toolbar. When you’re done listening to the message, tap the Go Live button to go back into the chat view where you can record a reply message.
While in the chat view, there are quite a few options that you can set by tapping on the Menu button in the upper-right corner of the screen.
First, you can set whether you wish to listen to the message playback through the speakerphone or the smaller handset speaker. You can also choose to enable or mute alerts, mark all messages as read, clear the current chat, or delete the entire chat.
Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.
