Fax App?

[Fat Fingers]

Any apps out there that allow your droid to receive a fax? My vision is someone with a fax machine uses their fax machine to send a fax to your cell number. When you answer your phone and the fax machine on the other end sends its obnoxious signal, it triggers the fax app on your phone to launch and receive the fax.

Why some people still insist on sending faxes these days, I will never know, but some do insist.

 

[Cory Streater]

One of the features of Fusion Voicemail Plus is the ability to receive faxes.

 

[Fat Fingers]

Can the Droid be used to Send and Receive Faxes?

Can't find any info on apps for this function so I am thinking maybe one is not needed. Maybe the Droid can do it w/ its OS?

 

[Fat Fingers]

One of the features of Fusion Voicemail Plus is the ability to receive faxes.

Just spoke w/ them. There is a monthly and/or per fax/minute charge if I want to use their app. I was hoping to find/but an app that I could load onto the Droid and send/receive faxes as much as I want for no extra charge (like one could do with a fax machine in their home attached to a land line). Of course, data usage would still go against my regular monthly plan I have with VZW.

Can't seem to find an app for this.

 

[darreno1]

I've sent and received faxes via email using Concordsend's service.

 

[Fat Fingers]

I've sent and received faxes via email using Concordsend's service.

Not looking for a service where I have to pay monthly or per fax. I was hoping to find an app to buy that would allow me to send/receive unlimited at no charge just like a landline fax machine allows. Understood that faxes would still go against my data plan, that is not of concern, just don't want to pay a subscription fee or per fax.

 

[MBSMD]

I'm not aware of any way to do this without some kind of email-to-fax/fax-to-email service.

 

[DeeMat]

FF, I'll let you know if I come across anything. So far, the only ones I can find are Windows based... There has to be something like this out in the market already (for free).

 

[SOLO#AC]

+1 I use e-fax through my computer, so I'm not sure if there's any app yet. How would you get it to print?

 

[takeshi]

Not looking for a service where I have to pay monthly or per fax. I was hoping to find an app to buy that would allow me to send/receive unlimited at no charge just like a landline fax machine allows. Understood that faxes would still go against my data plan, that is not of concern, just don't want to pay a subscription fee or per fax.

Fax machines don't use data. They transmit via phone lines. You can't send/receive faxes on the Droid without a service as the Droid itself can't send or receive faxes.

 

[takeshi]

The problem is that somewhere along the line the data would have to be converted to an actual fax over a phone line. An app by itself isn't going to provide such a solution. Hence all the fax services.

 

[prometheus]

A while ago I used a program that did something different than what you want. But, the same end result...

The company was called "efax" -- google it. It creates an email address that faxes are scanned and forwarded to. The sender sends it to a phone number and for all intents and purposes on their end they think they send a fax. You get the incoming fax message converted to a scanned image and emialed to you -- arrives at the same time.

So... not the same phone number and no squirelly noises in your ear. But you can be sitting in traffic and receive a "fax" on your cell phone.

 

[Cory Streater]

Threads merged.

 

[GenericMessage]

Fax machines don't use data. They transmit via phone lines. You can't send/receive faxes on the Droid without a service as the Droid itself can't send or receive faxes.

I feel I must correct this statement.

Fax machines transmit the scanned image VIA data. Phone lines have been able to carry data for a long long long time (ever hear of DSL?), thats why copper is great.

Sadly there is no way to fax really from the droid. That requires a specific identification number (also known as a phone number). That number is tied to Verizon and cannot be used for any other purposes with your phone.

eFax is the only way you can go (where it randomly generates a number).
That or just attach the document in a email, and send it that way.

Lots of Camera to PDF apps out there!

Sorry to not have better news FF.

 

[Geezer Squid]

Efax works great. They send the fax out via email in either their own proprietary format or PDF. The droid will view the pdf's fine. You can send a fax from you droid via their email to fax service. You can fax .doc, .pdf, etc. from your droid.

 

[Fat Fingers]

Disappointed that Droid cannot do this. For those interested, below is the solution I adopted.

Goal = Eliminate the Voip phone line in my house that cost $20/mo and was used exclusively for faxing (send and receiving). On average it would be used 2 times / month (only a few pages). Preference was to find a free replacement.

Solution:

a) For outgoing faxes, Faxzero (Google it) provides a free service. It allows 2 outgoing free faxes a day (no more than 3 pages per fax). It does put a small ad advertising itself on the bottom of the cover page. This works perfect for me.

b) For incoming faxes, signed up for K7 Unified messaging service (Google it). It provides me a free fax number and forwards all received faxes to my e-mail with a PDF attached (cannot exceed 2 meg per fax). This limitation could be an issue for me. We shall see. It also requires that I get at least one fax per month else my account will be canceled (this definitely is an issue for me). To get around this issue, I signed up for a weekly fax from U. of Maryland med school. If they stop their service, I could have a problem. If any of you know of another fax broadcast I can sign up for, I would appreciate it.

c.) I also signed up for a free e-fax account which allows me to receive 20 pages of faxes per month (actually a rolling 30 day period) for free as well. Bad thing about efax is that the faxes do not come in PDF format when I receive them. They require (free) proprietary software to be downloaded on my PC to read it. Thus I cannot read them with Droid or any other PC I may be on unless I download the software. No PDAs are compatible.

So this is not the cleanest solution and I wish my Droid could do this instead, but I think it will work for me. Bye bye Vonage.

BTW, why the heck does anyone fax anymore? The only reason I do it is b/c my wife has some clients from the stone ages that demand she send/receive docs via fax. Customer is always right.

 

[Fat Fingers]

I feel I must correct this statement.

Fax machines transmit the scanned image VIA data. Phone lines have been able to carry data for a long long long time (ever hear of DSL?), thats why copper is great.

Sadly there is no way to fax really from the droid. That requires a specific identification number (also known as a phone number). That number is tied to Verizon and cannot be used for any other purposes with your phone.

eFax is the only way you can go (where it randomly generates a number).
That or just attach the document in a email, and send it that way.

Lots of Camera to PDF apps out there!

Sorry to not have better news FF.

See above for the solution I adopted. I still think that technically it is possible for there to be a fax app. My vision would be for it to work the following way:

1. ) For Outgoing, simply enter the fax number and the attach the docs you want faxed. What goes on behind the scenes to make this work is a problem for a smart person to solve.

2.) For Incoming, the app would be always running in the background. When an incoming call arrives on my regular number it does nothing until I manually answer the phone. When I answer the phone and hear that squirrly high pitched screech, the app takes over and receives the fax.

I predict this app will exist some day. Iphone has some fax apps, but I did not research them well enough to see if they worked the way I envisioned.

 

[bintmartin]

phonefusion

I have been using this app for free for receiving faxes on my Motorola Cliq. It works great and it is free. You can also save your received faxes to your memory card as .pdf files.

 

[szsjq]

Got Free Fax also allows user to free fax online to the US and Canada. It does not place ads on user's fax.

 

[brnswrth]

Visual voicemail through Verizon

I recently added the visual voicemail feature on my Verizon account. This feature does allow you to receive a fax. But, it does not allow to view the fax, you may only call your voice mail and print at either your existing phone call location (as though you are calling from a fax machine) or enter an alternate phone number to print.

The app that I was looking for would be similar to that you would see in a windows program like winfax that may allow you to just receive. But alas, no dice.

If any one has an alternative method or app to allow you to just print from the droid, I think we'd be in business.