@jeffkinn wrote:
Have you tried On Voicefeed - a better experience that Hullomail and allows contacts to be grouped with customised greetings for each group. And a group can be one person.
Vodafone will probably never roll out VV - nor will the other networks. Surely a decent signal so you can make and receive calls is more important that built in VV as opposed to an excellent VV app that replaces normal voicemail with a much better experience?
I appreciate the suggestion, I really do. But I'm afraid that On Voicefeed - or any other third-party app - will give me the same problems as HulloMail, in that it is simply not tightly integrated to the phone. I want all my phone stuff in the phone app; if I have an app dedicated to voicemail then that's another app to keep track of notifications for, and I simply don't have space on my homescreen or dock to put it somewhere where I'll see the little red indicator. And no, the notification in Notification Center doesn't cut it either, as that is something I have to remember to go and check. If I saw a notification on the lock screen I'd have to decide between listening right away (thus forgetting or at least interrupting the task I had picked up my phone for in the first place) or leaving it to one side and inevitably forgetting to go find it in Notification Centre or the third screen of icons.
With Visual Voicemail I get a red number on my phone icon, and that's on the dock so I see it frequently. I don't have to check the voicemail NOW, I can leave it until later knowing that the constant reminder means I won't forget it.
As to the decent signal - I do get a decent signal, just not at work. And even then, it's still possible to make and take calls, albeit with difficulty. Saying it's between a phone that can make and receive calls and a phone with a decent voicemail experience is oversimplifying; it's about deciding between a poor experience at work coupled with an excellent experience elsewhere, or a merely adequate experience everywhere.
I've now bitten the bullet and switched to Vodafone but I'm watching the seven-day cooling off period ticking down as I'm still not sure I've made the right choice. I've already been frustrated by the voicemail menus four times (that's in 24 hours):
- one was impatience/lack of time; the first time I called it, it asked me to say my name and I didn't want to. Instead of waiting a moment, and so hearing the "press star to skip" prompt, I thought "Sod this, I don't have time for this faffing" and hung up. This wouldn't have happened in a visual UI as I'd have been able to see the skip button. In fact, in the Visual Voicemail interface the "setup greeting" function is behind a button anyway, so you can use the voicemail without ever pressing that button or having to choose not to set a greeting. It's opt-in rather than opt-out; good UI design.
- one was a bug; it walked me through the setup process twice (this is in addition to my aborted first attempt above)
- two were the voice prompts being too quick to start, so I missed the questions as I was still bringing the phone back to my ear after having pressed the requested button.
Nitpicky? Sure. But if I'm paying a shedload of cash for a gadget I reserve the right to be nitpicky about how it performs.
