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Android app recommendations

Tony Gamble

ULTIMATE Member
I got one of the SipGate basic contracts whilst they were on sale. My BT landline is copper and I know I will need to port it sometime.

I used a Grandstream ATA to see how it picked up my allocated (not ported) SipGate number and it was fine.

I am moving to another Android phone. On my old phone I have
CSipSimple
Softphone
Zoiper

I can load all three on to my new phone but wondered, as it is a year since I experimented with them, whether anyone was finding another app they felt was more reliable.

All I want to do is check my broadband is happy with SipGate - from time to time.
 
I got one of the SipGate basic contracts whilst they were on sale. My BT landline is copper and I know I will need to port it sometime.

I used a Grandstream ATA to see how it picked up my allocated (not ported) SipGate number and it was fine.

I am moving to another Android phone. On my old phone I have
CSipSimple
Softphone
Zoiper

I can load all three on to my new phone but wondered, as it is a year since I experimented with them, whether anyone was finding another app they felt was more reliable.

All I want to do is check my broadband is happy with SipGate - from time to time.
I've been down a similar route and VOIP on mobile is a bit of a sad show.

First of all, VOIP may not work on some networks. I find it works out of the box on Three, but have problems on EE.

Second, the apps.. I mean, they're not that bad, but they will trash your battery because they run non-stop listening to incoming calls.

Some of the apps will advertise some sort of "push notifications". Indeed, they sort of do that, but how they do it put me off them. Basically they learn your user, password and voip server and turn their upstream servers into the actual client, listening for events, then pushing notifications and calls to your phone via the Google Firebase framework thingy.. If you are happy with that, then may as well try some of these apps. Most of them will cost a couple of bob, but I was fine with that.

Anyway, what I ended up with is a client running non-stop on my PC (on which I spend a lot of the day, I use the Linphone client and works well).
As for the mobile, I just ended up setting a forward at the voip provider to my mobile phone, so I no longer have a voip client at all on the phone. Th downside to that is that I am paying extra, as the forwards basically mean making a call.

HTH :)
 
My broadband is from Lebara.

All I want to check is whether a call coming into my SiGate number is getting through.

Hence the app on my phone.
 
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I'm not sure what you are asking, The Sipgate core network uses YATE (yet another telephony engine).


Are you looking to monitor the Grandstream ATA to confirm it's registered?
 
"Are you looking to monitor the Grandstream ATA to confirm it's registered?"

No.

I want to use my phone to see if my Lebara feed is, in any way, objecting to my SipGate feed.

Lebara can be unexpectedly weird. A month ago it blocked a perfectly legit site that forced me into using a VPN. On Saturday it chucked me back to Vodafone when I was ordering some pills from a company I have used for a decade and who 'upgraded' their web site. It did match Vodafone's 'certificate'. Deary me!

Before I set sail with my forty year old landline number to the magic of VOIP I want to see what my broadband is doing to make life complicated. Yes, I will check the Grandstream but, as I read it, we have yonks to wait before losing copper becomes the next reason for people to glue themselves to telegraph poles!
 
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Thanks Pheasant.

I see I had Softphone on the old device. I'll put it on my Flip 4.
Worth it. It will ‘ring’ for incoming calls whether or not the app is running, as it uses the native ‘push’ architecture of Android. So saves your battery. Worth every penny.
 
Acrobits (either Softphone or Groundwire)

The best by far. Not biased 😅
I had 2 problems with them actually:

1 - they take your credentials and basically set up a voip client with them on their servers (which is fair enough from a technical perspective, but holy moly privacy)

2 - Their app hasn't worked once on my phone. Now my phone runs LineageOS+microG, but all my other apps get timely push notifications so ...🤷‍♂️
 
I had 2 problems with them actually:

1 - they take your credentials and basically set up a voip client with them on their servers (which is fair enough from a technical perspective, but holy moly privacy)

2 - Their app hasn't worked once on my phone. Now my phone runs LineageOS+microG, but all my other apps get timely push notifications so ...🤷‍♂️
1. No different to passing your legacy email provider login details to Gmail and getting your email pulled into Gmail, or am I missing something?

2. To be fair I think you're a bit on your own there. I think respectfully they cant guarantee operation if you're using a non official Android or IOS phone distribution. They will support official Android and iOS. If you go off piste...
 
1. No different to passing your legacy email provider login details to Gmail and getting your email pulled into Gmail, or am I missing something?
Yes, it's a similar case.
BTW I don't have Gmail check my other emails, that'd be a bit creepy as I've been trying to degoogle for a while now.

2. To be fair I think you're a bit on your own there. I think respectfully they cant guarantee operation if you're using a non official Android or IOS phone distribution. They will support official Android and iOS. If you go off piste...
Indeed, I made my peace with this. I just use call forwarding to my mobile's number.
 
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Yes, it's a similar case.
BTW I don't have Gmail check my other emails, that'd be a bit creepy as I've been trying to degoogle for a while now.


Indeed, I made my peace with this. I just use call forwarding to my mobile's number.
yeah in terms of risk this one is pretty low. I mean most folks will happily put their cred's into a free third party VoIP app they downloaded off the internet....so you know its degrees of risk and these guys appear to be fairly trustworthy and my personal level of risk is very low (my VoIP account balance is typically around £10-£20 and not auto-top enabled).

Also if they get hacked its my SIP login details and not my SIP provider account details also which are compromised.
 
I paid £8 for Acrobits (but I had credit on the play store). Lucian is totally right, their push notification server knows your credentials. Not ideal.
 
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