Android 'visual voicemail' equivalent?

[netarc]

Having recently migrated from the iPhone 3GS to the S2, I was blown away that there appeared not to be a native equivalent of the iPhone's "visual voicemail" feature (which downloads/caches voicemails to the phone for playback) on Android!

I have a kludgy version of visual voicemail working with the AT&T Messages app, but, to be frank, that is one crappy app, not least because it forces consolidation of all your messaging (texts, phones, voicemails, etc), and to boot it appears to be a resource hog.

I'm curious how other AT&T S2 users are handling voicemail, do most people just call the vmail # and read/manage voicemails over the phone, or is there an effective visual vmail equivalent?

 

[Simba501]

Having recently migrated from the iPhone 3GS to the S2, I was blown away that there appeared not to be a native equivalent of the iPhone's "visual voicemail" feature (which downloads/caches voicemails to the phone for playback) on Android!

I have a kludgy version of visual voicemail working with the AT&T Messages app, but, to be frank, that is one crappy app, not least because it forces consolidation of all your messaging (texts, phones, voicemails, etc), and to boot it appears to be a resource hog.

I'm curious how other AT&T S2 users are handling voicemail, do most people just call the vmail # and read/manage voicemails over the phone, or is there an effective visual vmail equivalent?

Google Voice

 

[titanoman]

That's weird. T-mobile's S2 has visual voicemail.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

 

[vientiane]

That's right, I believe only iphone has visual voicemail (AT&T), but not others.
I also use GOOGLE VOICE.

 

[SteveISU]

That's weird. T-mobile's S2 has visual voicemail.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

Which ironically is coming to AT&T, so hold out if you can. lol

 

[netarc]

Which ironically is coming to AT&T, so hold out if you can. lol

can you elaborate on that? what will they be calling this new service that's coming to them, or are you talking about as part of the T-mobile aquisition?

 

[Chex313]

Hmm.... At&t's Messages App seems to work perfectly on my wife's phone. Granted she only uses the voice mail tab, we use the free text app text+ for text's. Between ios and android.

I mean we actually like it better then the native visual voice mail, since it transcribes into text as well as playing the message.

If it hadn't worked Google Voice was the next choice. The At&t App was just dead simple to set up. I thought it was great that they even had something like this, would have hated for my wife to go back to calling in for voice mails again.

 

[SteveISU]

can you elaborate on that? what will they be calling this new service that's coming to them, or are you talking about as part of the T-mobile aquisition?

T-mobiles S2 variant is coming to ATT in the form of their first few LTE devices. From the looks, it's a T-Mobile re-branded as an ATT. T-mobiles version, has VVM.

 

[jsntrenkler]

I like Google Voice, I can access it from anywhere and while not perfect the text to speech feature is nice.

 

[planoman]

T-mobiles S2 variant is coming to ATT in the form of their first few LTE devices. From the looks, it's a T-Mobile re-branded as an ATT. T-mobiles version, has VVM.

It is a carrier feature not a phone limitation. Most phones can support it if the carrier does. I have heard some good things about the at&t app., have not used it though.

 

[netarc]

Hmm.... At&t's Messages App seems to work perfectly on my wife's phone. Granted she only uses the voice mail tab, we use the free text app text+ for text's. Between ios and android.

I mean we actually like it better then the native visual voice mail, since it transcribes into text as well as playing the message.

If it hadn't worked Google Voice was the next choice. The At&t App was just dead simple to set up. I thought it was great that they even had something like this, would have hated for my wife to go back to calling in for voice mails again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad ATT offers something at least ... but my experience with this app is that it tries to do to much, and as a result does a mediocre job of everything. e.g., I've found in a couple of cases voicemails don't end up in the "Messages" app ... I heard the vmail when dialing in, but it never got downloaded for play locally.

All told, the ATT Messages app just isn't as clean/reliable as visual vmail on the iPhone.

 

[netarc]

I like Google Voice, I can access it from anywhere and while not perfect the text to speech feature is nice.

Can google voice be used to take vmails on your primary mobile #? That is, won't it only work if someone calls your google VOICE phone number? I need a vmail for my actual AT&T phone #, and I didn't think gvoice could do so (unless I port my # over to google or such, which I'm unwilling to do).

 

[Dr Triffid]

I use Phone Fusion's Visual Voicemail Plus. It's a free app, and to me, it's the closest to the iPhone VM setup.

 

[maskedcarrot]

Geez I am suprised no one mentioned YouMail.

I use it on my Android phones on AT&T.

Just go to Visual Voicemail For Your Phone | YouMail and sign up an account, then download the YouMail app and there ya go. Works perfectly.

Plus you can listen to your messages online as well as on the phone.

 

[SteveISU]

It is a carrier feature not a phone limitation. Most phones can support it if the carrier does. I have heard some good things about the at&t app., have not used it though.

So ATT only allows it at NC on the iPhone?

 

[tunie]

I use YouMail. Aside from visual voice mail (not free) I enjoy that I can assign different greetings for my contacts. They also make it very easy to block telemarketers. The only thing I don't like is that they make it extraordinarily difficult to download my contact list. Because of that, I enter the contact into my phone first and then again, into YouMail. Still a nice free service, though they do charge for VVM.

 

[titanoman]

I use YouMail. Aside from visual voice mail (not free) I enjoy that I can assign different greetings for my contacts. They also make it very easy to block telemarketers. The only thing I don't like is that they make it extraordinarily difficult to download my contact list. Because of that, I enter the contact into my phone first and then again, into YouMail. Still a nice free service, though they do charge for VVM.

It is to free.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

 

[sailador]

Can google voice be used to take vmails on your primary mobile #? That is, won't it only work if someone calls your google VOICE phone number? I need a vmail for my actual AT&T phone #, and I didn't think gvoice could do so (unless I port my # over to google or such, which I'm unwilling to do).

yes it does....when people call your primary numbers it just forward to google voice

 

[maskedcarrot]

I use YouMail. Aside from visual voice mail (not free) I enjoy that I can assign different greetings for my contacts. They also make it very easy to block telemarketers. The only thing I don't like is that they make it extraordinarily difficult to download my contact list. Because of that, I enter the contact into my phone first and then again, into YouMail. Still a nice free service, though they do charge for VVM.

Yes it is a free service. If you pay extra you don't get the Ads. Actually you really onlt have to deal with the ads on the website, I hardly get them at all on the app itself.

The weird thing which I don't understand, is why is it that AT&T is the only major US carrier which doesn't offer Visual Voicemail on their android phones. All the other majors do. AT&T is really lame sometimes and just doesn't get it.

 

[netarc]

yes it does....when people call your primary numbers it just forward to google voice

So let me make sure I get this ... I'm guessing you are forwarding your primary AT&T phone number to google voice, and since you have gvoice installed on your droid and are signed in as yourself, the forwarded call to your gvoice number comes back around to ring up your phone? And then if you don't answer, it's the gvoice vmail which answers & records msg?