Google Voice SMS question.

[cc1995]

I just recently joined Google Voice and signed up with a new google number. I don't plan on handing that out to my friends and family yet, but more to websites and other people I don't want to give my cell phone number to. I choose this route with the new google number so that down the road when I add more lines to my number like (home, work) and not just my mobile I can do that. But the big reason I'm not giving it out to friends is that I'm on verizon and my plan is just below the friends and family plan so everytime i make a call through my google voice number I'll be charged minutes rather than no minutes for in network calling since all my friends and family are on verizon as well so calling them from my verizon cell number is free. I realize that if I had the friends and family plan I could setup my google number as a friend and bypass this issue and the cost isn't worth it to upgrade.

So my question is...I downloaded the Google Voice app for my Droid and have set it to not make calls using my google phone number because of what I wrote about in the above paragraph. But I want to be able to text people using my google voice number only since I don't have a text package through Verizon and doing it through google voice will be free. Do I have to reset the Google voice app from don't make any calls using google voice or is SMSing through google voice completely seperate and I won't have to change my initial setting in the app since SMSing isn't calling? Sorry if I'm confusing everyone. Hopefully I was clear with my question. I notice that when I click and hold for a few seconds on a contact name a bunch of options come up and one is "text"...when I hit "text" it gives me the option to text with the normal messaging application that came with the Droid or text with Google Voice. If I choose Google Voice will it do this through my Google Voice number even though I have setup my google voice app like I said above to not make calls with it?

Lastly, I have notifications setup within Google voice to send me emails when I get a message. Do I need to do this if I have the Google Voice App installed? Doesn't the app do the same thing? I don't want to be getting double notifications right. So should I just disable the notifications on the web in Google voice and just receive notification through the GV App only. I figure people hear have experience with this.

Sorry for the long questions...but I thought I would be thorough.

Thanks,

 

[TekHawk]

might not be hitting everything here but, make sure you have it turned off one the site to NOT send to your phone or it will send a SMS to your cell number

its use data unlesss you mess up the above you shouldnt get billed for that

this wont work with sms apps and you will probley want to just move the messaging icon on your screen and use replace it with the google voice one to be safe

and im not sure if you can set it to always use google voice as your text client as i have not tried (using a nationwide plus plan so unlimited sms to everyone is included)

also if you sms verizion people alot you might want to look into how many of them have more then the cheap plan w/ free VZW to VZW sms mms

 

[takeshi]

So my question is...I downloaded the Google Voice app for my Droid and have set it to not make calls using my google phone number because of what I wrote about in the above paragraph. But I want to be able to text people using my google voice number only since I don't have a text package through Verizon and doing it through google voice will be free.

So your contacts will have to have 2 different numbers for you and remember to call on one and text with the other? Good luck with that.

Do I have to reset the Google voice app from don't make any calls using google voice or is SMSing through google voice completely seperate and I won't have to change my initial setting in the app since SMSing isn't calling?

Voice calls and SMS are 2 separate things. The short answer is no.

 

[romeov]

How To: Totally Overhaul Your Phones With Google Voice - Google Voice - Gizmodo

 

[les017]

And short of going the full Gizmodo route...to save on text/SMS using GV, do the following.

1) Do not have SMS sent to you on getting voivemail. Instead get a Gmail which will notify your phone via data plan.
2) Do all of your SMS thru Gmail. Set up GV to forward SMS to your Gmail and let Google SMS-to-email converter deal with it for you. People will still send your GV number a text but from the GV number to you it will be email, which will basically appear like a collapsed conversation to you. Works well, but the logistics of it take a little getting used to.