Phone Capabilities on Tablets

I have been selling tablets and phones for a few months now and one of the most common questions I get about the iPad and Android Honeycomb tablets is "Can I make phone calls with this?" The short answer is no. However this is remarkably simple to change. Google Voice lets you do a number of things with phone-like capabilities that are really amazing.

OK, now I am not talking about Skype or things like it. Skype will let you make calls to other Skype enabled devices and will charge for calls to standard phones. This is great and all but we can do better.

Lets start with what you will need to do to set this up. First you need to have the Internet available. Wifi works, though 3G should suffice. Second if you don't have a Google account you will need one. Don't worry, they are free. Google runs the backend we will be using to make these calls. Once you have an account with Google go to voice.google.com and set up your account to use Google Voice. Just follow the prompts, it is really easy. At one point you will be asked to put in a number that your Google Voice calls will be forwarded to. This is a cool thing about Google Voice, they will give you a number people can call to ring all of your other phones. Right now you will need to put a number in to set up the account. If you don't want this feature, just want it to ring you tablet, you can disable it later.

Now that you have a Google Voice account set up go to the settings menu and under the Phones tab check Googe Talk (you can uncheck the number you put in before or add more numbers here as well). This will tell Google to forward your calls to the tablet. Google will also handle voicemail for you as well, including transcriptions.

Now we are ready for the tablet side. First iPad. Download the Talkatone app from the appstore (it is free as well). This app interfaces with Google Voice and allows you to send and recieve both phone calls and text messages from your iPad. All you need to do is put in your Google account information and it will do the rest.

Android requires two apps, one of which isn't free. First we need the Google Voice app from the market. This one allows you to send text messages and receive voice mail. I have been using this on my phone since about the day I got it and don't miss the the standard texting app.
The next app you need is GrooVe IP. It costs $4.99 in the market. GrooVe IP uses Google Voice to make phone calls. All you do is put in your Google account information and you are set. You can even set it to handle all calls from any app. I can only assume that this feature isn't built into the Google Voice app because it would make phone carriers not happy, but that is only an assumption.

There you have it. Yes, you can make phone calls from your tablet, and they are free after you buy the app. Gotta love the Internet!

UPDATE 4 January 2012 So a new app was released to do this same thing called Gvoice. I am experimenting with it right now. It seems to work pretty well, but has a few bugs so far. For example, when using a bluetooth headset it doesn't use the headset protocol but A2DP. The audio sounds great but it uses the microphone on the phone and not the headset. I will update with more information later. UPDATE 12 April 2012 Well, it looks like Gvoice was changed to Spare Phone, for anybody that has been looking for it. I don't know why but it was changed but it is still there. And another new entry has come to Android, namely Talkatone. I am testing all three and will keep you posted. So far they all seem to be very good if a little light on the visual pleasantries.