Mountain View, California — If you are like most profound Google Voice users, you may be thrilled to know that Google Voice on Android 4.0 devices gained a small new feature with a software update on Thursday, including greater integration with the newest version of the operation system, Ice Cream Sandwich, allowing users to listen to their Google voicemail directly in the native phone app.
Voicemails will no longer be restricted to the Google Voice app but instead will show up in the phone’s call log, just like standard carrier voicemails. The latest update handles voicemails like calls, so you will see them in the same place that you usually see Google Voice incoming and outgoing calls in the dialer. Thus, users can now view their GV calls, and scan their visual voicemails all from one easy place instead of tossing back between the standard call log, and Google Voice.
From the Google Mobile Blog:
Yong-Hoon Choi, writing over at the Google Mobile Blog, reveals that voicemails will appear in the list of outgoing, incoming and missed calls in your phone’s call log and you can just simply touch them to play them. “I do not want to jump between my call log and the Google Voice app to see who has called me and what message they left,” wrote Choi.
Choi continued stating that–You will also be able to play, pause, and skip back during voicemails the way you normally would in the Google Voice app. Also, another noteworthy functionality that has been integrated is to slow down the playback speed of the message which is great for when someone is telling you their callback number, or you even speed playback up, so you can quickly listen to longer messages.
Unfortunately, this feature is only available to Android 4.0 at the moment, so older versions of Android can not take advantage of the new integration, but it is possible they will see it in the future.
Among other things, the image above you see not only displays missed GV call, but the play button to instantly start and play the visual voicemail from inside the standard call log. This makes things more simple, easy, and quick for those that use Google Voice. To activate this feature, make sure you have the latest version of Google Voice downloaded to your phone from Google Play. Then, in the Google Voice settings, hit the check box next to “Voicemail display.”
Nevertheless, the latest update is a handy one for the admittedly small intersection of Google Voice users and stock Ice Cream Sandwich (or a suitably close ROM) users. While this is not the VoIP addition to Google Voice that many have been hoping for, it is one more way that your Google Voice number and identity can easily move between Android devices. There is just no way to match this kind of integration on another platform–something that Google is surely proud of.
Download the updated Google Voice app to apply the changes.