Google Voice Update Integrates Voicemail With Android's Phone App

If you are like most profound Google Voice users, you may be thrilled to know that Google Voice on Android 4.0 devices gained a small new feature with a software update on Thursday, including greater integration with the newest version of the operation system, Ice Cream Sandwich, allowing users to listen to their Google voicemail directly in the native phone app.

Voicemails will no longer be restricted to the Google Voice app however instead will show up in the phone's call log, just like standard carrier voicemails. The latest update handles voicemails like calls, so you will see them in the same place that you on the whole see Google Voice incoming and outgoing calls in the dialer. In this way, users can now view their GV calls, and scan their visual voicemails all from one easy place instead of tossing back between the standard call log, and Google Voice.

Yong-Hoon Choi, writing over at the Google Mobile Blog, reveals that voicemails will appear in the list of outgoing, incoming and missed calls in your phone's call log and you can just simply touch them to play them. "I do not want to jump between my call log and the Google Voice app to see who has called me and what message they left," wrote Choi.

Unfortunately, this feature is only available to Android 4.0 for the moment, so older versions of Android can not take advantage of the new integration, nevertheless it is possible they will see it hereafter.

Among other things, the image above you see not only displays missed GV call, nevertheless the play button to instantly start and play the visual voicemail from inside the standard call log. This makes things more simple, easy, and quick for those that use Google Voice. To activate this feature, make sure you have the latest version of Google Voice downloaded to your phone from Google Play. At that time, in the Google Voice settings, hit the check box then and there to "Voicemail display."

Nevertheless, the latest update is a handy one for the by the way small intersection of Google Voice users and stock Ice Cream Sandwich users. During this is not the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) addition to Google Voice that many have been hoping for, it is one more way that your Google Voice number and identity can easily move between Android devices. There is just no way to match this kind of integration on another platform--something that Google is surely proud of.