If you hadn’t noticed, I’m a fan of Google Voice..  But after a couple days with the G1, now I’m a fan of Android too.

As I am currently unable to switch providers, I wanted to use the G1 without cellular service.  I won’t go into the process of getting past the “No SIM Card” screen, as that’s a whole other story; but I will tell you how to configure a G1, or other Android device, to pretty much work perfectly with Google Voice.

Requirements:

• G1, or some other Android device
• Active Google Voice account
• Active Gizmo5 account linked in Google Voice’s Phone Settings
• Google Voice (the official app)
• Sipdroid
• GV (thanks to Evan Charlton for this)

The process:

First install Google Voice (the official app) and configure with the following options:

• Making Calls - Do not use Google Voice for any calls
• This Phone’s Number - select your gizmo5 number

Next install GV and configure it.  Enter your account info and click next.  When it shows your Phones, just click next, lastly for your GV Settings:

• Route all calls through GV - Checked
• Calling method - Call back
• Your callback number - Gizmo5 number
• Voicemail PIN - 1234

The last two options don’t actually matter in this setup, or anyone using callback, but they’re required by GV because Evan left out a conditional statement somewhere.. :p

Lastly, install and configure Sipdroid:

• Username/Password - the Gizmo5 account you created
• Server - proxy01.sipphone.com
• Port - 5060
• Use WLAN - checked
• Preferred Call Type - Phone

So, how does this work?  When you attempt to create a call from the Contacts or Dialer, Evan’s GV app takes control and initiates a callback via your G1’s internet connection.  This instantiates an incoming call from Google Voice, through your Gizmo5 account, which Sipdroid catches.  The beauty of this configuration is that Sipdroid and GV both integrate into the G1 so well that everything looks like a normal incoming or outgoing call..

Noteworthy:  It may be possible to configure Sipdroid to initiate callbacks directly, thus negating the need for GV, but I’m too lazy to bother trying to figure it out right now.  Also, Google Voice’s usefulness is questionable..  The Visual Voicemail is awesome, but the text messages don’t show up instantly, in fact, I’m not sure how often it polls for new messages, or if it only checks when the app is started, or when you Refresh from the Menu.

Good luck, and happy ‘off-the-grid’ calling.

Google Voice has the option of forwarding all incoming calls to multiple numbers.  Additionally, it can forward calls to a Gizmo number.  Gizmo, is a standard SIP-based VoIP service.  Meaning that an Analog Telephone Adapter can be used to attach any standard PTSN telephone you want to your Gizmo account.

So what does that really mean?

After registering for a Gizmo account, I set up my ATA, similar to this $30 ATA from Grandstream, to use the Gizmo service.

Then I configured Google Voice to forward calls to my Gizmo number, which requires an exciting verification process that consists of answering the phone and dialing 2 numbers.

Voila!  Free incoming calls to a real phone at my house, which has no standard pots landline.  Additionally, if I get bored of talking to you on my landline, I just press *, answer on my cell phone and hit the road.

I’ve been a GMail user for years now, so I was a little excited to hear that Google bought out Grand Central.  Mainly because all of the google apps are so nice..  Google Voice would eventually be cleanly integrated into Google’s apps.

So, the first shortcoming with Grand Central was that my contact list was always out of sync with my HTC Touch Pro running Windows Mobile.  Sure I could manually export from one and import into the other, but that’s a bit of a pain.  With Google Voice, I’m now configured to use activesync on the phone to sync to google’s server.

What it means is that my phone and my google calendar and contact list are always in sync, changing one instantly affects the other via push technology.  After an hour or so merging all of my contacts, I ended up with one clean list of contacts.  Now I even have all of my contacts’ email addresses on my phone, something I never bothered to do before.

Now, with all of my GV contacts constantly in sync with my phone, the next issue was calling them with the GV number so that other people would return my calls appropriately, as I’ve disabled my cellular voicemail.  Enter iDialer and iContact.  This clever piece of software allows profiles for use with Grand Central, Google Voice, Calling cards, Cellular, etc..  But the effect is that now; with this fancy dialer, my calls are all routed through GV automatically.  This works by calling my GV#, pressing 2, and dialing my contact’s #.  It’s a fairly acceptable method vs. callback, and for any of us with unlimited calls to our favorite #s, we’ve now got unlimited outgoing calls.  If you don’t mind not having caller-id and using call presentation, you can have unlimited incoming calls too.

Next up, SMS, GV has some nice options for text messages, allowing viewing and responding via the website, but they also enable both via the phone, by essentially bridging the SMS through another number.  This wreaks havoc on my contact list, as I can’t possibly guess which number is going to be used for each of my contacts, but it still works.  I wouldn’t mind knowing if those numbers are static, so that I can save them to the contact.

The voicemail transcription is a bit funny at this point, but I can see it being valuable in situations where the message is well articulated.  I’m still looking for a visual voicemail app, and hope someone will release one in the near future, but until then, I’ll walk to a computer or open PocketIE..