Dell Voice

[ceredon]

Released recently, it offers many of the same features of Google Voice and Rogers One Number. It is lacking some functionality but beats both of the others in one or two areas. I'd be interested in hearing what others think of it.

Pros:
-free Canadian number (DV is powered by Fongo, which is another fibernetic/Freephoneline.ca company)
-Free long distance calls to almost any Canadian city (they have a list)
-Purely VOIP so you don't use any minutes, but will use data if you aren't on wifi. RON doesn't allow VOIP calling from your mobile (PC only) and GV requires third party apps (talkatone).
-free voicemail service. Even if you never use the app or the calling features, this can be used instead of your carrier VM, for free. Just forward conditional calls to your DV numbers.
-Can port you existing number to them if you choose ($25)
-Follow Me calling, which is essentially the same as GV and RON, where you can have incoming calls ring multiple numbers
-Very good sound quality on both wifi and 3G.

Cons:
-Incoming calls is supposed to work, but so far, 1/2 a day or testing, all incoming calls go straight to VM. This could be caused by a number of issues and it not necessarily the fault of the app, but it may be.
-Voicemail system is very basic. No Visual Voicemail component. It dials in and plays the messages in order, just like a traditional carrier VM system.
-No SMS support. This is a critical feature for anyone that might consider this as a replacement for their expensive cell plan. Dropping to a basic cell plan (with data) and using DV for all telephony features would necessitate SMS for many people.
-So far alerts are not working for me (i.e. of new VM messages) but this could be the same issue that is preventing incoming calls from alerting me on my phone.
-No free calling to US

So far I like what I see, though they still have some work to do. It definitely beats most of what RON offers and could close the gap with GV with some work. I would love to see them eventually replicate and improve on all features GV offers.

[djemzine]

Released recently, it offers many of the same features of Google Voice and Rogers One Number. It is lacking some functionality but beats both of the others in one or two areas. I'd be interested in hearing what others think of it.

Pros:
-free Canadian number (DV is powered by Fongo, which is another fibernetic/Freephoneline.ca company)
-Free long distance calls to almost any Canadian city (they have a list)
-Purely VOIP so you don't use any minutes, but will use data if you aren't on wifi. RON doesn't allow VOIP calling from your mobile (PC only) and GV requires third party apps (talkatone).
-free voicemail service. Even if you never use the app or the calling features, this can be used instead of your carrier VM, for free. Just forward conditional calls to your DV numbers.
-Can port you existing number to them if you choose ($25)
-Follow Me calling, which is essentially the same as GV and RON, where you can have incoming calls ring multiple numbers
-Very good sound quality on both wifi and 3G.

Cons:
-Incoming calls is supposed to work, but so far, 1/2 a day or testing, all incoming calls go straight to VM. This could be caused by a number of issues and it not necessarily the fault of the app, but it may be.
-Voicemail system is very basic. No Visual Voicemail component. It dials in and plays the messages in order, just like a traditional carrier VM system.
-No SMS support. This is a critical feature for anyone that might consider this as a replacement for their expensive cell plan. Dropping to a basic cell plan (with data) and using DV for all telephony features would necessitate SMS for many people.
-So far alerts are not working for me (i.e. of new VM messages) but this could be the same issue that is preventing incoming calls from alerting me on my phone.
-No free calling to US

So far I like what I see, though they still have some work to do. It definitely beats most of what RON offers and could close the gap with GV with some work. I would love to see them eventually replicate and improve on all features GV offers.

Interesting review or overview you have there, however regarding your Cons, at least it offers free voicemail. Not many people I know use visual voicemail and the Big 3 usually charge extra for visual voicemail service. As far as SMS goes, it doesn't really affect those customers who have unlimited sms, which pretty much carriers offer it in their plans. As far as free calls to the US, well they released it specifically for Canada, give it some time and I am sure it can be done. There is a workaround to get Google Voice to work with Groove IP but that's a different topic.

Going forward, I think its pretty useful that they have provided this VOIP service for FREE and eventually with the constant updates they have, I am sure it will be even much more better.

PS there's already a thread in the Hot Deals section posted: http://forums.redflagdeals.com/fongo.../#post14236001

As far as I know, I have no issues either in terms of call quality on WiFi and on my Bell's LTE network. Tested it out on my mom's iPhone which is on the 3G network and I had better call quality on the LTE network. So that might be a big plus as well.

[hiddendragon]

seems not working, tried to call, always says "Call Failed: Your call cannot be completed. Please ensure that you have a valid wifi or data connection.", neither my 3G nor my wifi is working. guess they already met some difficulties.

[Jimboski]

Post your review In this thread also so they know!

http://forums.redflagdeals.com/fongo.../#post14256239

[Gee]

Basically this is just Adware

[ceredon]

Basically this is just Adware

well, it's a free app and service, so they need to generate revenue from somewhere. I'd wager that we'll soon see them offer a paid version of the app that is ad-free.

[manteiv]

I have been testing Dell Voice in the last couple days.

I like it. The call quality is very good both on Wifi and on 3G via President's Choice UMB on an iphone 3GS and Android Galaxy S.

The ability to send and receive free SMS would be nice to have, at least between DV users.

There are a few issues:

1- "Call Failed: Your call cannot be completed. Please ensure that you have a valid wifi or data connection."

this problem seems to happen if you register your account using the phone. It takes several hours before the account become active. In the meantime, you have the above error message. The way around is to use your computer to register the account. Once you get the registration done and your phone number via the computer, login your account using your cell phone.

2- Receiving calls: after several hours after using DV, if someone calls you, the call goes straight to voice mail. This is caused by DV exiting after a while (about 2 or 3 hours I noticed on my Android phone). For some reason, I need to launch DV again after several hours on stand-by otherwise the program will exit itself. This does not seem to occur on the Iphone, just on my Android. Initially I thought it was caused by my JuiceDefender power management program but even after uninstalling it, no change.

3- I already have Viber running and this one adds on top of the battery load. I suspect that if I have both Viber and DV running, my phone will probably barely make it through a full day of 8-10 hours