After roughly a year, Apple has allowed Google Voice apps back into the app store. This was the last thing that I wanted and had been considering jailbreaking for. The first one to get approved was GV Connect which appeared late last Friday. I decided to grab it as soon as I could to try it out. I personally don’t make a whole lot of calls with my google voice number, but I do use it for the free unlimited texting. Up to now, I had been using the web app Black Swan which is pretty impressive when you consider it is all completely web based. The main drawback of the web apps though was the fact that everything had to be downloaded like a standard webpage. This makes the process that much longer in receiving a text or getting to the dialer to make a phone call. After using GV Connect the last few days it has been a huge difference. There is obviously still a little delay for it to pull the text message from Google’s server, but it is barely noticeable unlike before.
The next day another app was approved called GV Mobile+ which was previously in the app store before it was pulled last year. I’m waiting to download this app until it is made available for free for a limited time this Saturday. It looks very similar to GV Connect, so it will probably be just personal preference as to which interface a user likes better.
Once I’ve tried both I’ll post which one I’ll actually be using for Google Voice. Both apps right now run $2.99 a piece which is pretty cheap when you consider what you’re getting. It will be interesting to see if Google themselves resubmit their app that was never approved before. If that happens than I imagine it will probably be free, so it is up to you if you want to wait and see if that happens.
Here’s a few screenshots of the app from the GV Connect page.
