I love Google Voice. The day Google decides to pay for it, just like Google Photos, I can actually pull the trigger; It is incredibly useful to have a secondary phone number that you can send to your real one and thus hide the last one. And the day when Google Voice disappears – should it ever come – I will be very sad.
Easy as Google Voice, by simply going to the settings and selecting the option to sends calls and / or text messages to your real number, Google makes a change which means that you must now download the app to your device if you want to take full advantage of the service’s features. According to a recent Android Police report, Google will soon remove the ability to forward text messages from your Google Voice number to your real phone number.
As Michael Crider writes:
This is especially bad news for those who use Google Voice as effectively as our only phone number, and forward it to new SIMs and devices as we get it. Phones tend to rely on their standard SMS app for integration with many other services. The Google Voice app usually covers this, but it’s not very friendly with the rest of Android beyond the notification base.
However, before you blame Google for the change, you should know that it is not Google’s error this time. There are apparently a number of carriers start blocking these forwarded text messages—Maybe you mistakenly assume it’s spam. My assumption is that Google would rather have a manageable experience (in this case not a feature at all), rather than a conflicting experience.
So if you want to see and reply to text messages sent to your Google Voice number, you’ll probably want to install the Google Voice app (iOS, Android). If you do not feel the option for whatever reason, you can also just go to Google Voice settings and send every message you receive to your email address. You can then reply to the email to reply to the text – a more cumbersome method, especially if your friends are chatty, but still an option.
G / O Media can get a commission
