Google Voice on iPhone, Voice call Trick revealed

Yes, Google voice team found a way to provide Google Voice feature to all iPhone and Palm WebOS users via HTML5 interface. All you need to do is open your browser and type the mobile URL “ m.google.com/voice” , enter your Google Voice Credentials and you are all set to use Google Voice features. Sorry Apple you can’t block Google Voice this time. From an UI standpoint, the browser client looks pretty darn good with some limitations.


Using the browser client, you can:
• Initiate Voice Calls
• Send SMS
• Listen to Voicemail
• Update your Google Voice settings

Some details about the Telco trick:

For initiating Voice call, Google does a Telco trick here. Here is how the calling works
• You enter the number using the dial pad
• When u enter dial, the UI shows two pop up window
• Dialed number and a message “ Please press Call below to connect to Google Voice
• There is another popup windows, which has two buttons “Cancel” and “Call” with a temporary number allocated by Google
• Once you press Call button, the native iPhone call window will show up and your call will get connected to the number you entered.

Google allocates a temporary telephone number( Here's my temp number allocated for the call - +1(512) 850-4666 ), which you need to dial to connect to the number that you entered using the dial pad. I did a reverse lookup on the temporary number and found out that the number belongs to Level 3 Communications. The mapping of dialed number to the temporary number is done every time you make a call. I tried calling different numbers and for all the numbers same temporary number was allocated. So I guess Google is sending a data message to the server with the dialed number information every time you make a call. The mapping is temporary. When I tried calling the number from my iPhone’s recent dialed list, the call failed. So this proves that the number is temporary. However, if I leave the browser immediately after I see the “Call” popup button, and dial the temporary number manually then the call gets connected to the number I entered in the dial screen. I guess Google server is probably running a timer within which the user should press the “Call” button. If the timer expires, the temporary number to dialed number mapping is deleted.

Here is a video on how it works on the Mobile :