Voice over IP Ideas/ Questions
 

With the iphone 5 coming out (and I dont want this to be a Droid vs IOS debate) I am considering ALL of my phone options.

I currently use an iPad, iphone, and have an iMac at home. I am attached to my home computer, but there reallly is no brand loyalty, I just happened to end up with these devices.

What I would like to do, is to eliminate the need for a cell phone and a tablet by integrating them. Ideally, I would prefer to have everything I have on my ipad, but with a voice plan. The ipad is really nothing more than a big iphone anyway, so I don't know why they don't just release it with a voice plan.

So what I am wanting to do, is possibly port my number to a skype or google voice account and just use a tablet with a skype type app and do voip.

I want to know if anyone else is doing this or what major things I could be missing?

I realize that it is bigger and all of that, but the only times I make voice calls are in the car and I have bluetooth so its not a big deal.

The biggest gray area I can think of right now is texting. I know there are apps, but do they do picture messaging and some of that stuff?

The only real issue I can come up with is that I can't use the device like an ipod when running, working out, sports, etc.

Please any info you can add is great. I am open to any platform/ device.

I know that Android tablets/phones can be hacked to use a Google Voice number with the Google Voice app.
Have you spent much time on XDA?

^^^ yea you can basically do anything with Android, I haven't ever bothered to figure out just what.

Have you considered one of the newer Android phones? Galaxy S3 for example is 4.8? inch screen 1280x720, Galaxy Note is even bigger. For me at least, my 4.3" phone is a very different experience from a 3.5" iPhone, and I imagine those better screens nowadays are even closer to the tablet experience. And you can sorta stick it in your pocket.

Whatever you do -- get this bluetooth. It's rad!

thanks to you three.

I guess I have seen that they have the hacks and a few other ways of doing it. I played with the samsung note, and it is almost what I want, but just a little bit too small and a really awkward size. It feels like you are going to drop it because it is inbetween a large tablet and a small phone.

So I decided to go ahead and set up a Google Voice number with my current iPad Wifi. I want to see how well this works before I take the plunge/ spend any time or money doing it. I chose Google Voice for now because you retain the number and dont have to buy/ continue paying to keep the number. Text is free with google voice and that works well so far. I havent made any attempts at calling yet though.

Does anyone else do this? Are there tricks I should know?

My girlfriend uses G'Voice. All I know is every time she calls anyone, it really calls the G'Voice switchboard FIRST, so we had to add it to our unlimited list because it looks like she calls this one number and nothing else.

Hope that makes sense. It's hard to describe.

Sometimes I miss rotary desk phones.