I am an iPhone user. I've been playing with a decent Samsung Android phone for the last week and the thing that struck me was how much better VOIP worked on the Android. You could answer the call like an ordinary phone instead of getting a push notification and then racing through your unlock screen, launching the program, and then praying it logged on before the call went to voicemail. And this was if you were at the ready and caught the call on the first ring with the phone in front of you. Imagine walking down the street with it in your pocket!

Is there a jailbreak VOIP app that builds itself in the same way. I understand that Apple's "silo" approach to apps is what is stopping third party VOIP apps from doing this, but I would love to be able to click on a link in an email to dial VOIP or answer a call that way. I am on iPhone International with unlimited data. When I am outside the US most of my calls are going out that way now a days.

Have you tried google voice on the iPhone? It an app that works much the same way as the integrated phone function.

I also hear Line 2 is good too, but I personally haven't used it.

Google Voice is not VOIP on a cellphone (unless you do some jury rigging). It forwards calls using the normal voice function.

You're right. What about Skype? That works well for me when I'm traveling internationally. Not entirely free, but very cost effective for the quality.

Now that I think about it, that may also not be entirely VoIP, but maybe a hybrid type service?

Talkatone will give you Google Voice over VOIP on an iPhone; GrooveIP will do the same on Android.

I am a Line2 subscriber and use that number as my cellphone number. I generally like it, but every App Store VOIP app on iPhone has to function like a slio. It is walled off from the rest of your phone. It has its own messaging app, its own visual voicemail, access to your phonebook from in the app, and a dialer. It cannot take over the dialing function from other programs. You can't dial off your headset, you can't click on an email with a phone number and dial it. None of these things are a huge problem. The big problem for me is that I really have to be on the top of my game to catch and incoming call on Line2 when it comes in on VOIP. By the time I unlock my phone, launch the app, and answer the call, the caller has gone to voicemail. On Android, it works like a regular call.

Again, I appreciate why an App Store programmer couldn't replicate this functionality, but there are Cydia Apps that do. I have a Google Voice App from Cydia that pushes GV texts into the Apple text app. I can put Google Voice into my Apple dialer and either direct dial or trigger a call back from my native dialer. This doesn't help that much when I am roaming. (It helps a little because I program it to callback to my roaming SIM).