T-Mobile may not have an official Visual Voicemail service for customers, but PhoneFusion plans to change that—for the Google G1, at least. The app, which was previewed today at the Under The Radar Mobility Conference, is currently available on the Palm, Windows Mobile and Blackberry platforms, and works in a similar fashion as the VV apps on the iPhone and Instinct; the name, number, date and time for each of the messages in your inbox appears on the screen as a list of entries. As far as Android specific details go, there’s not much info on the app except that it will appear in the Android Marketplace by the end of the year. [NewsBlaze via IntoMobile]
Eagle-eyed spotters recently took note of a few visual voicemail tidbits inadvertently pushed live on Verizon’s site (now removed), most notably that the service will potentially be free. The site is down now so this remains in the rumour department (where are the screenshots, guys?), but if true, the reports go against what we all assumed penny-pinching Verizon would do. The only phone model listed on the leaked site was the refreshed Voyager, which jibes with what we’ve heard previously. [Verizon (dead) via Phone Arena]
We mentioned that there were rumors that Verizon was going to be bringing its own version of visual voicemail out sometime, and now there are further rumblings that this will include visual voicemail on the BlackBerry Storm. This makes the touchscreen, haptic-feedback smartphone sound even more like a real iPhone competitor, wouldn’t you say? [Electric Pig]
Rumour has it that Verizon Wireless will be joining AT&T and Sprint in offering visual voicemail, in this case on four upcoming phones: LG’s Chocolate 3 and an updated Voyager (possible software update but more likely hardware refresh), along with the mysteriously code-named “Blaze” and “Utopia” from Motorola. That’s more phones than any other carrier to date, though there’s no mention of it on the iPhone wannabe LG Dare. The catch is that the optional service will cost US$2 a month—annoying when you consider other carriers offer it for free, though totally expected when you consider that even Verizon’s e-mail app costs an extra US$5 per month. Look out for this to arrive in late July or early August. [IntoMobile]
VoIP telephone provider Vonage just began offering Visual Voice Mail, a text transcription service that turns all of your voicemail messages into text that’s immediately emailed to you. Using a combination of speech-to-text software and human transcribers, Vonage is charging 25 cents per transcription, which could end up getting expensive if you have a lot of voice mails. We gave the service a try, with inconsistent results.
