PreCentral: SynerGV 2 bringing Google Voice messaging integration to webOS phones

[News Reporter]

Touchpad owners who use

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received a treat last month when was released into the App Catalog and voicemail transcription within the stock webOS Messaging app. But webOS phone owners were still left using the original SynerGV app without the due to differences between webOS 2.0 and 3.0. With its latest update to version 2.0.8, Eric Blade, the developer of SynerGV 2, has now begun to add support for those messaging plug-ins for phones running webOS 2.1 or higher. Unfortunately, you won't find SynerGV 2 in the App Catalog just yet because the app itself isn't yet ready for webOS smartphones. The messaging plugins may work, but the app isn't formatted correctly and you can't access critical areas of the functionality.

Just because you can't load up SynerGV 2 in the App Catalog on your phone doesn't necessarily mean that you can't partake in its goodies. If you have a TouchPad to purchase the app and know how to homebrew, you can use Preware and to install it on your phone. Once installed, just open up the and you should have an option to add a "SynerGV Google Voice" account using your Google email address and password. Be sure to allow the account to use both Contacts and Messaging when prompted.  Once synced up, you will be able to use send and receive messages through Google Voice and get your voice transcriptions without the need of any third party app.

Just as with the synergy service on the TouchPad, there are still a few limitations. While sending messages are instantaneous, there is no push service for receiving messages. Instead, it pulls down the messages based off a time period you set in the preferences section of the SynerGV 2 app (that part of the app still works).  To combat this, you may still want to use Google's official SMS notifications of new messages and then just respond using the SynerGV plugin service. 

In addition, while you can send a new message through Google Voice to any number that you manually type in, you will only be able to , including via . If you have all your contacts already in Google, this is a non issue. But if you rely on your webOS profile or Facebook for your friend's numbers, then you are out of luck unless you manually type in their number or they initiate the conversation first so you just need to respond within that conversation.

If you decide to load up SynerGV 2 on your phone, remember that you are installing an app and service that is not officially released for your device. You are essentially a beta tester of the service until the time that the developer decides to release it into the App Catalog. However, if you are a Google Voice user and have either already purchased for your TouchPad or have $4.99 to spend, you may want to give it a shot. Even with it's shortcomings, having Google Voice messaging and voicemails integrated directly into the stock webOS messageing app is worth it.