iMessage (Messages App) and Google Voice

[Globe199]

Wife and I each got a new 4S yesterday. We do NOT have a text messaging plan because I refuse to pay into something I used to get free.

Anyway, we're using Google Voice as an alternative. As far as I can tell, I've set up both phones the exact same way, but her GV messages seem to come thru the Apple Messages app and mine don't; mine come thru the GV app.

Any idea what is going on here? (1) I don't want to pay for any messages if I can help it. (2) I thought Messages could be used as a texting client between iOS devices using internet data and not true SMS. That's how it works on my iPad. But I can't tell exactly what's going on with our iPhones.

 

[Globe199]

Wife and I each got a new 4S yesterday. We do NOT have a text messaging plan because I refuse to pay into something I used to get free.

Anyway, we're using Google Voice as an alternative. As far as I can tell, I've set up both phones the exact same way, but her GV messages seem to come thru the Apple Messages app and mine don't; mine come thru the GV app.

Any idea what is going on here? (1) I don't want to pay for any messages if I can help it. (2) I thought Messages could be used as a texting client between iOS devices using internet data and not true SMS. That's how it works on my iPad. But I can't tell exactly what's going on with our iPhones.

I think I figured this out for anyone who's having the same problem. Well, we were definitely being billed for incoming text messages because they were being forwarded by Google Voice to her actual cellular phone number.

In the Google Voice setup web page, her cell number was being set to forward text messages. This seems obvious, but when I googled for the original problem, Google's own documentation on this is very ambiguous. I figured the problem was with the phone setup, not the Google Voice setup. So I set her phone to not forward and it seems to have worked.

 

[Tinmania]

If you jailbreak the iPhones you can get a Google Voice extension that essentially folds its text functionality into the standard Messages app. So you could use the Messages app for both iMessages and Google Voice text. This is not forwarding from Google Voice to your phone number: your phone's native texting does not have to be used at all.

Jailbreaking is not currently possible on the 4S with 5.1 firmware, but it should be out soon.




Michael