Google voice back on iPhone through browser

By siliconindia   |   Monday, 28 December 2009, 22:19 IST
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Google voice back on iPhone through browser
Bangalore: Recently there was lot of controversy when Apple pulled down all the applications from App Store which had Google Voice. This move by Apple had raised many eyebrows, including an FCC investigation, but it didn't make a change in Apple's decision. One of the companies affected by this decision of Apple was Riverturn, whose VoiceCentral application was shut down, according to Tech Crunch. After a few months Riverturn is back with a bang and have launched the same applications, but this time on browser. The application is called Black Swan edition and is completely browser-based but has the look and feel of a regular app, complete with a dialer, list of transcribed voicemails, and SMS messages. When you dial a number, Google Voice simply makes a call to your iPhone while simultaneously calling the number of the person you are trying to reach, so you still pay for the voice minutes. But the appeal of having Google Voice on your iPhone is the ability to read transcribed voicemails, or play them, and avoid SMS charges by texting through Google Voice. It even offers offline caching and takes advantage of the HTML5 features of mobile Safari. But all these things are not completely compatible with the phone browser as of now. The application has many flaws, the main one being that it cannot access your contact list on your iPhone through the browser. Although, VoiceCentral mimics the look and feel of the iPhone contact manager, you have to export your contacts to Google Voice first and access them that way. Another limitation is that the audio plays through the speaker instead of through the earpiece, but if you are using a pair of earphones that is not a problem. Developers might have just found a huge loophole in Apple's store strategy. If this application, or for that matter any application for iPhone is made available on the mobile browser then Apple won't get a single penny from the sale.