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My carrier having pretty high monthly prices for voicemail, I did not take the service. However, when I'm at school, unable to answer, and my busy doctor calls me, knowing I probably won't be able to join her for weeks with her busy schedule and only one phone line for the whole clinic, or when a hidden number (which could be anything from the hospital to telemarketing) calls me, I really wish I did have a voicemail box.

But I don't have one, and my carrier isn't getting any cheaper. Prices closely match other carriers, of course, like any "healthy" telecom market.

So I have been searching for an app that allows this, to no avail. I did find an app that automatically answers an SMS back to the caller if I miss their call, but 1. it didn't always work, 2. 95 % people calling me are doing so from non-mobile phones, 3. some people actually pay for incoming SMS, 4. it doesn't allow people to leave a message.

I saw something called Google Voice, which sounds amazing, with not only a free voicemail box, but even the ability to view them as text, and have them in your inbox, but when I go to https://www.google.com/voice, I'm taken to Google Mail.

And searching the Play Store for "Google Voice" doesn't yield any appropriate results. These things tell me, I guess, that the only "Google Voice" available to me, in Canada, is that thing that enables you to make calls from your PC browser's Gmail inbox.

So is there any way for me to have a voicemail without paying my carrier's high fees?

There should be some way to do this locally, at least, because the call is here, and the phone has an SD card to save it on, and the ability to answer it, listen to it and talk to it, as illustrated by the fact it's, uhm, a phone. And it can record sound, too. Unless they put some sort of lock in phones to prevent people from escaping carriers' abusive costs.

Or so I hope. So, is there something I can do? Did I misunderstand the whole Google Voice thing? Did I miss something obvious? Is there some way to do this?

My phone's specs should be:

  • Samsung Galaxy Q (SGH-T589W)
  • Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread
  • Processor: 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 (if indeed it's the same as the Gravity Smart, because information on the Galaxy Q is rare)
  • Internal storage: 152 MB, some of which I think is taken up by the OS or useless stock software, because I can't ever seem to free it
  • RAM: 279 MB
  • SD card: 2 GB

My carrier is called Videotron, if it's of some use.

|improve this question
  • Ariane, app recommendations are off topic here (see our FAQ). Small hint, though: Search the playstore for "answering-machine". A few of the search results sound promising. call-recorder even yields better results. – Izzy♦ Jan 10 '13 at 21:40
  • Google Voice is not universally available. What country are you in? – ale Jan 11 '13 at 15:40
  • @user1 I'm in Canada. – Ariane Jan 11 '13 at 17:05
  • @Izzy Well, uhm, unless we haven't been looking at the same Play Store, I see nothing like what I'm looking for. :/ And I'm not -exactly- looking for app suggestions. More, like, asking however it can be done. – Ariane Jan 11 '13 at 17:10
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Here is the google play link for Google Voice, if that's what you have been looking for.

Total offline answering machine functionality is not possible due to androids technical barriers. See this thread on XDA.

You can use apps like YouMail Visual Voicemail which sounds promising. If not, you can easily find many alternatives after a quick search on google play.

|improve this answer
  • Thanks. I had read such a thing, more or less, but it was something super old, nad they were talking about trying hard to fix it, so I thought maybe...~ --- Google Voice isn't compatible with my phone. Explains why it didn't show up on search results. --- YouMail Visual Mail talks about "major US carriers" being supported. Looks like it works with the carrier's voicemail, which I'd have to rent. :/ @user1 : read this too. – Ariane Jan 11 '13 at 17:09
  • @Ariane Sorry pal. This was all I could find. – Sid Jan 11 '13 at 17:11
  • Aw well. I'm not losing anything, just not gaining anything, so. – Ariane Jan 11 '13 at 17:14

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