Google launched a new web-based version of its telephony service Google Voice on the iPhone today at m.google.com/voice, built on HTML5 like Google’s other iPhone apps are. This after a long and heated battle with Apple over allowing Google Voice on the iPhone. Once it’s a website, though, there’s nothing Apple can do about it.
HTML5 makes for a relatively nice experience, with its local caching for speed and its responsive interface, but there are some things about the Google Voice web app that just don’t feel quite right. It’s hard to know which of its problems are just oversights to be fixed and which of them are rooted in the fact that it’s a web app. What do you think, is an HTML5 telephony app good enough? Or does your phone need to, you know, be on your phone?
The new Google Voice mobile web app doesn’t offer a clear way to add contacts through the mobile interface, its call history function falls short and there are other things that are funky about it. It’s fast, but it’s still just not as fast and responsive as a native mobile app. Perhaps that will change with time. It does feel nice, though, and has a very attractive interface.
It was less than a year ago that Gmail was first available in HTML5 on the iPhone. Now there’s a heated debate about whether the future for mobile apps is in the browser like this or whether native apps will still reign supreme.
What do you think? Is the new Google Voice in HTML5 good enough for you to use and like? Let us know in our poll below. RSS readers can click through to respond and view responses.
