Rohan McLeod <rhn@jeack.com.au> wrote:
Diverging slightly from the subject of Android phone hardware; I was sitting around with a friend complaining about the absence of an 'answering machine' function; of any of the phones in an advertising catalog. The conclusion we came to was, that it was because phone companies make so much money, from voice-mail, that they are motivated to discourage manufacturers, from such an innovation.But then it occurred that the obvious way to 'break the monopoly', was for someone to write an 'answering machine ap' .
I run FreeSWITCH, which has a voicemail application included (as does Asterisk). If I don't answer a SIP call within a specified time (I think I've set it to 30 seconds), the voicemail application is invoked, a message is recorded, then sendmail (really Postfix in my installation) is run to send me a message, with the wave file as an attachment. My primary inbox is on the same machine as FreeSWITCH, so the wave file is never transferred over the network unless I log in from my laptop, read the message, transfer the file to the laptop and play it locally. It would be possible to link in a mobile phone to this scenario via SIP. I recall that there's some support for GSM devices also, but I can't remember the details. The disadvantage of having a voicemail application on the phone is that it won't be invoked when the device is switched off or otherwise inaccessible - the very moments in which it is most needed. If there's an API for the call handling, you should be able to write one, however. I have a very basic mobile phone at the moment which I use sparingly. If I were to buy a more sophisticated device, I would prefer just to invest in a data plan and use SIP. So far as I know, mobile networks aren't good for low-latency traffic and I understand that the carriers have revenue reasons to discourage it, but ideally it should be possible to use the phone simply as a SIP (or XMPP, if you prefer) endpoint.