Mountain View, California — Good news for owners of Android and BlackBerry users. Internet search engine leader Google over the weekend announced a series of new enhancements brought to one of its services, namely Google Voice apps for Android and BlackBerry phones. The update which is designed to provide faster connection time, and in fact eliminates the need for Google Voice app users to make a request to Google Voice server every time, they want to make a call for them to send the server the phone number, they want to dial.
According to the official release, a modest enhancement to Google Voice application for Android and BlackBerry has been updated to version 0.2.0.2, and is configured to offer them access to a new feature, which tweaks the back-end calling mechanism to make dialing a faster process namely “direct access numbers,” when you call out.
“At Google we are concerned with speed. Our motto is faster = better. This is true for our Google Voice mobile apps as well. When you wish to make a call, your phone should connect you as quickly as possible, whether you are calling via Google Voice or not. Today we are releasing an enhancement to the Google Voice mobile app on Android and Blackberry phones, which results in placing the calls much faster. We assigned this feature [direct access numbers],” Flavio Lerda, Software Engineer, states in a recent post on the Google Voice Blog.
In other words, calls took longer to place through the previous apps because the software needed to request an access number from the Google Voice server before accomplishing a ringtone. This skips the load required by your phone’s data network to communicate with Google’s server, Google explained on its blog.
Although there is no real modifications to the feature set on the front end, Android and BlackBerry smartphone owners should now be able to place calls much faster with the new version of this mobile application, Google mentions that callers should experience speedy connection times.
According to Google Voice Software Engineer Lerda, this is how the new feature works:
“To make the concept clear for those who are interested in knowing how the solution can offer faster placing of calls, they should know that the “direct access numbers” feature is intended to assign a unique number to any person one calls. With direct access numbers, we assign a unique phone number to every person you call. This means that we no longer need to use your data network to access the server each time you make a call, so calls will be placed much faster.”
Google Voice users who own Android or BlackBerry phones and are interested in reaping the benefits from the new feature should download the appropriate software solution for their devices. Users of the Google Voice service can update to version 0.4 for free via the Android Market. Blackberry owners can download version 0.2.0.2 of Google Voice for BlackBerry by visiting m.google.com/voice from your mobile browser.
Google Voice is accessible only in the US, and users would require an active account for enjoying the application.