Official Google Voice App for iPhone Is Here

The official Google Voice app for iOS is finally on iTunes.

The techcrunch story has a lot of the details on the history of the app, but, briefly, it has been a long time in coming. Apple approved, then removed a third-party app called GV Mobile, which was essentially a Google Voice front-end, saying that the app violated Apple’s terms of use for apps in that it replicated functionality of the built-in phone application.

Recently, Apple revised its app guidlines, and GV Mobile (now GV Mobile+), as well as some others have been re-admitted. The official Google Voice app has been in the review queue for a while and just today has been approved.

But only in the US.

This makes sense, seeing as how Google Voice is officially only available in the US, and it is fairly easy to get around the geoblocking on this app as well. You’ll just need a US iTunes account (see here), and then follow my instructions here. I just tested it out and have the app on my Canadian iPhone.

The app does not work with “gmail voice” as you do need a full Google Voice account in order to log in to the app.

The app doesn’t seem to work with the iPod Touch (even the 4th gen which has a speaker and mic, and the ability to use the mic-enabled headphones), so this seems like an oversight. Let’s see if Google fixes this and allows iPod Touch users to use the app as well. No word yet on if it works with the iPad.

At least the app is here now (for some of us). Now we just need Google to expand Google Voice service to other countries.

Push notifications for text messaging are very quick and work as expected. It’s a nice way to get around expensive text messaging fees if you don’t subscribe to a plan.