Filed under: iPhone
iPhone 2.0 supports playback of WAV voicemail
If you've been aggravated at your iPhone or iPod touch in the past for its inability to play back WAV voicemail files from home phone services like Vonage or AT&T (synergy foul! yellow card), you may now breathe easier. TJ Luoma was 95% through building a rather elaborate script to convert incoming WAV voicemails to MP3 for iPhone playback (and, while he was at it, add some reverse lookup magic) when he discovered that the 2.0 firmware now includes the ability to play back the particular flavor of WAV file used in these voicemails. Problem solved.It may not be a headline feature (or even a stealthy but universally acclaimed UI addition) but for those of us who need it, it's going to save a lot of time and trouble.
Thanks to TJ & to Curt for independently sending this one in.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Scott Reynolds said 2:23PM on 7-16-2008
I've been using WAV format from my Asterisk system nearly since I got my 1.0 iPhone last August. The trick was to change it from WAV49 to WAV. Are we saying that the iPhone will play "WAV49" now?
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twomonsters said 7:52AM on 7-17-2008
You can also view YouTube videos in your email - with a link that opens them up in the iPhone YouTube application.
Tom Boucher said 6:14PM on 7-16-2008
I was wondering the same thing. I got WAV files from eVoice all the time and never had a problem playing them.
Tim said 2:37PM on 7-16-2008
OK, I must be slightly confused then- does this mean that iPhone users can save and export their voice mail messages?
I ask because I had a voice mail that I really wanted to save to my Mac, but was not able to figure out any answers before it expired.
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Michael said 4:06PM on 7-16-2008
No, this lets you listen to voicemails left on other systems that are then emailed to you on your iPhone. Such as AT&T CallVantage (is it still called that?) and Vonage.
Thom Brooks said 2:39PM on 7-16-2008
It sure would be nice if the iPhone were capable of checking for new voicemail via Wifi, and downloading it to the phone that way.
I work underground and am cut off from cell reception all day. Though I caution people about this and give them my office's landline, I frequently leave work to find that people left me voicemail hours ago.
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Ben said 2:43PM on 7-16-2008
As someone who uses Vonage at his business, this is huge
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noza said 2:42PM on 7-16-2008
I've noticed that I can play my Vonage voicemail for awhile now (several months). I just tap the icon and it opens like a movie file. Works great...
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DistortedLoop said 2:57PM on 7-16-2008
Wow, great! Thanks for pointing this out.
I cancelled my Verizon landline ($30/mo) a few months ago and replaced it with the MagicJack device and service which is only $20 per year. They use email to send you any voicemails as wav files, but my plan to listen to them on my iPhone failed. Just checked, though, and it works now. Fantastic!
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John Mortnesen said 2:59PM on 7-16-2008
I ran across this the other day. For me, this is one of the biggest features.
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cydeweyz said 2:59PM on 7-16-2008
Great. Now maybe he can get to work on fixing GrandCentral's iPhone voicemail problem.
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Chase Rief said 3:04PM on 7-16-2008
Still not working for Grand Central voice-mails!
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christapher said 5:14PM on 7-16-2008
crap, that was my first thought too. ive been giving out my grandcentral number while im in this limbo between at&t, t.mobile, and my new at&t/iphone number. i was hoping that i could continue to do that even after i get my iphone, but i suppose not. Does anyone know if you can turn off the grandcentral voicemail and have it be left in your normal inbox?
Dave Aiello said 10:14PM on 7-16-2008
@Chase:
If you view the source on a Grand Central voicemail forwarded to you as email, you'll see that the player they use is Flash-based. This is why it doesn't work on the iPhone.
Dave Aiello
OperationGadget.com
Scott said 3:41PM on 7-16-2008
Does anyone have any advice for playing .au files on an iPhone? My company uses Packet8 VoIP and they send out voicemails in that format. They play fine in Quicktime on my Mac, but the iPhone can't handle them.
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dan said 4:35PM on 7-16-2008
i'm in the same boat, i use Packet8 for my business phone and would LOVE to be able to play the .au files they send for voicemail. the phone seems to recognize them as Quicktime files but it just says Format Not Supported when it goes into the player.
i'm definitely writing Apple for a feature request AGAIN, so the more people who write in for this, the better!
glad the WAV support is working for others though, a very sweet and unexpected new feature!
macsosguy said 12:23AM on 7-17-2008
I have Packet8 and VM plays fine now. The entire gist of this article was that by upgrading to 2.0 you can now listen to VOIP generated vm on your iPhone. My buddy created a customized Apple Script to get around this problem. He also e-mailed Apple to report the bug with the iPhone not being able to play WAV files. Apple e-mailed him back with the fix: iPhone version 2.0! :-) SO now I don't need to run his Apple Script in the back ground. So Dan and Scott,I'm at a loss as to why your VM from packet8 doesn't work on the iPhone.
—Steve
BK said 8:23AM on 7-17-2008
I also cannot listen to packet8 voicemail in sun audio format (.au) on my 3g iphone. This would be so huge, I cannot tell you. My phone recognizes the file type now (which it never did before, and tries to open with QuickTime, but alas, I get a message: "This movie format is not supported."
Anyone have any brilliant ideas?
dan said 8:43AM on 7-17-2008
Steve - how are you able to play it when the 3 of us cannot?? are you jailbroken??? i get the identical error message as BK indicated... not sure what any of us are doing wrong that would prevent us from listening to these files. it seems like the process would be relatively straight-forward, just click and play...
Scott said 11:03AM on 7-17-2008
BK - That's exactly what happens for me. My guess is that the iPhone doesn't have the right audio codec to play the .au file. I'm not sure if the SDK gives developers the ability to create one or if that has to come from Apple.