Google Voice for Voicemail on my Android Phone

I know this post is a year or two late, but I just wanted to weigh in my 2 cents on Google Voice for voicemail.

I switched over from an Apple iPhone 3G (which lasted me 3 years!) to an Android phone. Before switching over, I had a huge dilemma whether I should switchover or stay with iOS. I still don't know if I made the right decision, but I can do with what I have.

One of the major drawbacks that I saw with switching over to Android was that I lost the visual voicemail feature that iPhone had. I loved not having to dial into my voicemail to retrieve it. After 3 years of not having to do it, it felt odd having to do it again.

But I (finally) remembered that I had Google Voice, something that I rarely used, which I could set up with my phone to handle voice messages left by callers. It's better than visual voicemail because:

• It could transcribe the voice message (that is, if Google transcribes it somewhat correctly) so I can read it from my phone.
• It has a Google Voice widget that I can add to my home screen so that I can see excerpts of the messages that were left for me without having to load the Google Voice app. If I wanted to see the whole message, I would have to open the app.
• If I'm at my computer, I could always read/listen to the voice message from my computer.

I'm sure there are more than the three advantages that I've mentioned above, but these are the major pros I have with Google Voice.

There is one issue I have with using Google Voice is that all my voice messages will be saved on Google's servers, which can be seen as a slight privacy concern. Since most voice messages I receive do not contain sensitive information, I'm not too concerned; however, if I do receive one, Google would have it. I guess that's peanuts to the amount of information Google already has about me from my email, Android device, blogger posts, and all the other Google applications I use.

So for those who jumped off the iPhone bandwagon like I did, here's an alternative that you can use for enhanced voicemail features. It does help if you have a smartphone with a data plan. Oh, and also a Google Voice account.

Enjoy!