Ahh Google Voice, we meet again. Voice has a lot of things going for it, but shortly after the application was released for Android, I slowly realized that the downfall of it was its timing. While not horrible, having to wait an extra 15 made me just want to use the stock messaging application. one could theoretically get the bare minimum voice and text plan and use Google Voice for the rest, but I never wanted to rely on it. Thanks to a recent update, Google Voice not pushes your SMS messages in seconds.
Google voice is great, it does what it says, with a few issues, but for the most part, its fine. For a beta application, it works pretty well. Initially, when someone sends a text to your Google Voice number, it refreshes every fifteen minutes, which is not a long length of time, but it surely hinders the convenience of texts. In that time you have to wait for the receive the test message, you could have called the party, and have had it done with. This is what has kept me from diving in to the service head first. Google’s update now pushes your texts to you within seconds, not minutes. All you have to do is go to the settings menu and check the Synchronize Inbox box, and you’re good to go! This should please those who have yet to give it a go yet, or those who have tried it out and were unimpressed by the delay.
Also within the update is better contact support. Those accustomed to Android 2.0 and later are used to a menu that slides across your screen when you tap the picture of a particular contact. The menu displays options to call, text, message, email, find where they live if their address is in there contact information, and now the addition of a Google Voice button. nothing revolutionary, but it’s nice that they are paying attention to details. Hopefully they will start working on their voice transcription, as they are still laughable to read.