More on GrooVe IP vs "PHONE for Google Voice & GTalk."

Last week I blogged about making calls when my hotspot was only getting a 3G signal. Tonight I was able to test both GrooVe IP and "PHONE for Google Voice and GTalk" on hotspot with 4G as well as my home WiFi, which uses DSL from CenturyLink.

I was on Skype with my friend Javier who lives in San Francisco. He has AT&T service for his iPhone. I first called him using GrooVe IP on my DSL WiFi. The call had a delay slightly longer than Skype, but sound quality was good and we could converse pretty easily. I shut down the app and opened PHONE and had pretty similar results.

Then I switched to using my Overdrive Pro hotspot, which gets a 4G signal here at home, but a fairly week one. The signal strength is only about 10 to 20%. Both apps had a long delay. I could hear Javier clearly, but my voice was very tinny and mechanical to him. Additionally, when using the PHONE app, Javier could hear a delayed echo of his own voice. On GrooVe IP there is an advanced setting for echo cancellation which I have enabled, but PHONE does not have that option. So really the call quality is still pretty even for these two, but because GrooVe IP has the advanced options, it wins this round.

I'm not going to bother testing the PHONE app any more because I feel I have enough proof that GrooVe IP is as good or better than PHONE. I think having the free version of either one would be fairly equal. PHONE incorporates the SMS function of Google Voice as well, so if that matters to you then it should be a consideration. But I don't care about that. Since I already paid money for the full version of GrooVe IP, I'm going to stick with that.

It was nice to finally be able to test it. I've been feeling like a hermit lately because I don't trust my phone for making calls. After proving that my convoluted solution does indeed work, I can start making calls again, at least when I'm home on DSL anyway. In places where I have a stronger 4G connection, I should be able to use the Overdrive Pro for making calls too. But in the meantime it works well for texting and Facebook.