Talkatone gives you free calls, text messages and real-time location sharing on your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad via 3G or WiFi connection. Talkatone uses Google Talk and Google Voice services and bridges the gap between instant messaging on your computer and regular cellular calls on your mobile device.
Basic Talkatone product is free. Wherever you can find data connection you can make a call or send a text message. In order to get most out of Talkatone you need to have Google Voice Account and setup Google services.
Talkatone is one of the first full mobile phone app which works via Internet connection. Thus you don't spend your minutes, don't pay for roaming, keep your number with you wherever you are and communicate with your friends as soon as you get connected.
Talkatone makes real-time communication rich and free. And it only going to get better over time.
Talkatone doesn't require a special account. Instead it uses Google account to connect to Google services. Please make sure you use your existing GMail (or your Google Apps) email address for user name and the correct password for that account.
If you don't have a GMail account you can register one for free at gmail.com.
Normally, your Google username/password are stored on your iOS device and transmitted directly to Google over TLSv1-secured ecrypted connection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security).
However when you enable Battery Saving mode Talkatone to minimize constant data transmission by Google which always keeps your device awake and prevents device to go to sleep. Talkatone in this mode connects to Google through one of our servers. Please check the current list of our servers which may access your account in case you enabled battery saving mode.
We don't have your password. Since Talkatone uses Google accounts, you need to follow Google's instructions to reset your password.
After you activate Google Voice and set it up it will work across the globe if local regulations and networks there allow it. We have reports that people in UK, Australia, Singapore, France, Mexico, Russia, etc are using Google Voice through Talkatone.
But be aware of international data roaming charges! Emailing 1 photo is ~$50, 1 minute of Talkatone call easily could cost you $5-10 on 3G data roaming! So if possible, get a SIM card from a local provider with reasonable prices or use WiFi.
Talkatone relies on iOS4 VoIP backgrounding in order to receive messages and calls while Talkatone runs in background, so you need to have a multitasking-capable device. At this moment the following devices support multitasking:
Note: We noticed that jailbreak may interfere with multi-tasking. We suspect that some jailbroken devices may disable WiFi/3G access if you send Talkatone to background.
Yes, we do have version for Android devices available. Marketplace version supports armv7 and x86 devices only.
If you have older devices, you can install on your own risk side loading version.
Unfortunately no, Talkatone does not work on iOS 3 devices. We want to apologize for making the app very restrictive. There are technical reasons which forced us to make this choice.
The new iOS4 provides backgrounding mode. This allows Talkatone to receive calls instantaneously when the app is not active.
In old push mode Talkatone is not able to immediately receive call signal when it's not active. Push model simply doesn't work with voice well. And nobody wants to wait minutes until initial call signal will be delivered to the recipient device.
Definitely. When you invite your friends and they start using Talkatone you get high quality voice calls, unlimited text messaging and new features, such as location sharing.
Although we definitely recommend using WiFi or good 3G connection to make calls it's not required to use Talkatone. You can send text messages while using legacy Edge data connect and in some cases even make calls to gTalk friends.
We support 2 types of calls:
Yes, Talkatone is an ad-supported application. We mostly use iAds.
The issue likely happens because you haven't setup you Google services yet and didn't not make at least one test call to the phone from GMail web chat (on your Mac or PC). During this call Google will ask you to accept legal terms of service.
Please also make sure to include the country code when calling. The US/Canada code (+1) is pre-filled when you open the dial pad, don't remove it unless you are making an international call.
Google Voice calls to regular phone numbers are using plain uncompressed audio without packet loss correction. We are working on our own voice transcoding on our servers to introduce better tolerance to network imperfections. It will be released within next several weeks.
You can also try to play with settings on your WiFi router and try to select cleaner WiFi channel (default auto selection is often not the best choice. Several users reported that they were able to significantly improve call quality by picking better channel).
If your friends are using Talkatone then you can call them using gTalk contacts. If they don't have Talkatone yet feel free to invite them and you'll have much better voice quality.
Talkatone needs the following ports open for outgoing traffic:
"No-audio" on iPhones or iPod touches is a pretty common problem. Please check our Blog post where we outlined most obvious causes and solutions.
Do let us know if problem persists and you are not able to resolve it, we'll help you.
iPod Touch 4th generation and iPad as of iOS4.3.3 (or newer) have Hands Free profile enabled:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3647
Audio calling requires "Hands Free" profile (i.e. play audio AND record from microphone at the same time). However, please consider following:
We enjoy making Talkatone better and it's not possible without you. There are several ways of how you can learn new things about us and provide us your feedback:
Our Customer Support team is always here to answer your questions when you need help.