With home screen widgets, an on-screen keyboard, great notification management, and hands-down the best Gmail experience of any platform, Android 1.5 finally makes it easy (or easier, anyway) to love Google's foray into the mobile world. Of course, if you're coming from an iPhone -- as some users inevitably will be -- there are a few features that'll be sorely missed as you make the transition. For us, a biggie was visual voicemail, and after a little trial and error, we found a cool way to add it into our device without even leaving the Google ecosystem -- and even better, it's totally free. Follow the break for the full story!

Seriously folks, if Visual Voicemail for BlackBerry doesn't show up for real on AT&T within the next, say, three to six months, we're marching straight to AT&T Mobility in Atlanta and demanding an explanation. According to a screen grab snagged by a Boy Genius Report reader, the option to add BlackBerry Visual Voicemail has appeared (presumably by accident) in his account management system, though trying to enable it caused an unrecoverable error and an instant computer meltdown. On the real, we're glad to see the price tag at $0.00, but frankly, we'd expect no different.

So, those curious Visual Voicemail shots we saw last week? Evidently they weren't just some random effort in Photoshop. According to the Boy Genius Report, the new feature is indeed coming to AT&T's BlackBerry Bold, though an exact release date isn't disclosed. We're told it could be sooner rather than later for "at least some customers," so yeah, you're now free to get your hopes up just a wee bit.

We can't exactly say we know what's up with the image above, but word on the street has it that this just popped up on a BlackBerry Bold running v4.6.0.219 on AT&T. Upon trying to launch it, the user was greeted with a conspicuous error about provisioning being unsuccessful, but outside of that, it's shrouded in mystery. So, has anyone else seen hints of Visual Voicemail anywhere? Consider our curiosity markedly piqued.

Thanks to SpoofCard, AT&T and T-Mobile now owe some cash in the state of California, and the rest of us have been given one more reason to lie awake at night. The service -- of questionable non-illegal value -- reports your Caller ID phone number as anything you like, and injunctions filed in Los Angeles demand that the carriers stop advertising their voicemail services as being secure, considering that they can be set to rely on the calling phone number alone to connect to a specific voicemail box. For their indiscretions, AT&T will be coughing up $59,300 and T-Mobile owes an even 25 grand; meanwhile, SpoofCard's parent company will pay $33,000 for advertising its service as being legal in 50 states even though it's not.

[Via Phone Scoop]

We figured back in August that Verizon (and LG) would eventually be forced to pay up in order to keep visual voicemail on its handsets, and sure enough, that's exactly what has gone down with the former company. Verizon and Klausner Technologies have quickly settled outstanding patent litigation by way of Verizon entering into a patent license agreement for using visual voicemail. To date, Verizon is the 15th company to ink such an agreement, ensuring that the suits at Klausner can remain firmly parked in Grand Cayman, Aruba, Maui or any other blissful location they please for the remainder of their Earthly lives. As for LG? We'd say the outcome is all but imminent at this point.

[Via phonescoop, image courtesy of MyDigitalLife]

There aren't exactly all that many details left to announce, but Verizon has just gotten official with its late to the party Visual Voicemail service which, for the time being at least, is only available on the LG Voyager. As we had heard previously, the service will run you an extra $2.99 per month on top of your usual bill, and you'll be able to store up to 40 messages for 40 days, with an option to create up to 10 greetings and 20 distribution lists. Unfortunately, Verizon didn't take the opportunity to announce any firm plans for a roll-out to any of the other phones supposedly in line to get the service, with it only going so far as to say that additional devices will be getting it in the "coming months."

Seems like things are coming along nicely for the launch of Verizon's downloadable visual voicemail service, with some preliminary information briefly hitting VZW's interwebs before seemingly being pulled. As we'd previously heard, a retooled LG Voyager -- creatively named Voyager Refresh -- will be one of the first devices to get access to the service, while current Voyager owners will be able to download the app required to get hooked up. Unlike what we'd previously heard, though, it seems that Verizon has opted to offer the service at no additional monthly service charge (a wise move, may we add). Since the entire lowdown has been taken offline, there's no telling exactly when we're actually supposed to know that VVM exists or when we might be able to sign up for it, but all indications suggest it'll be sooner rather than later.

[Via phoneArena]

Update: We're hearing that the $2.99 / month fee is still in effect. For shame, Verizon!

Really now, who hasn't had a moment where they celebrated mightily after no one picked up on the fourth / fifth ring? Rather that trusting Lady Luck to lead your phone calls to voicemail, Slydial's giving you a main line in. Said company enables any US post-paid wireless customer on any major carrier to dial someone in a similar situation and drop a message in their voicemail box without having to actually speak to them. Folks interested in taking advantage simply dial (267)-SLY-DIAL from either a landline or mobile telephone, enter in another mobile number and either listen to a short advertisement or pay up in the form of a subscription fee or $0.15 per call. Give it a go and see how it turns out.

[Via DownloadSquad]

Details are still trickling in on this whole visual voicemail sitch on Big Red, but we're starting to wrap our noodle around it. In addition to the four devices we've already mentioned -- the Voyager refresh, Chocolate 3, Blaze, and Utopia -- it turns out that none other than the mighty BlackBerry Thunder will be among the first devices to benefit from sooper dooper 22nd century high-tech voicemail management.

We've also learned that it's actually the Vu30 (little close to the LG Vu, eh, guys?) that's being called the Motorola Utopia, while the Blaze will be some heretofore unknown touchscreen device -- pretty uncommon by Moto standards, particularly in the States where we don't get to benefit from the MING series' awesomeness. As always, we'll roll out more info as we get it.

Jump on the bandwagon much, Verizon? We're just bustin' your chops, guys -- we know it's hard to avoid jumping on the bandwagon when Sprint and AT&T (by way of Apple, of course) are starting to hustle hard with the visual voicemail trend. We've caught wind that VVM is actually shockingly close to launching on a handful of Verizon devices; the current target is late July to early August. That's the good news. The bad news, though, is that it'll run $1.99 on top of your regular plan pricing, which feels like a bit of a rip when the crosstown competitors are doing it at no additional charge. The feature will take the form of a BREW download that can be snagged and provisioned by the customer in the field without any customer service intervention, and will launch on specific devices.

The first four to get hooked up will be the LG Chocolate 3, the "Voyager Refresh" (it's unclear whether this is a hardware or firmware update to the present-day Voyager), and from Motorola, the "Blaze" and "Utopia." We're not sure what those two are, either, but the rugged V750 may be the Utopia, and deductive reasoning suggests that the VU30 could be the Blaze.

[Thanks, HTCKid]

SpinVox has made quite a stink over the past few months with its voicemail-to-text tech, launching on several carriers globally in addition to offering service direct to end users. Okay, so now that that trick's played out, what's next? The British firm's new BlackBerry plug-in takes the concept to the next level by automatically linking incoming translated voicemails to contacts in the phone's address book, making it a snap to reply to the message via text or email. Admittedly, it'd freak us out if we left someone a message and got a reply via email within a few minutes with a transcription of our own voicemail attached at the bottom, but hey, that's the brave new world we live in. The plug-in will run users £5 (about $10) per year on top of their normal SpinVox fees.

[Via MobileBurn]

Powered by SpinVox, Alltel has become the first national US carrier to offer a service capable of transcribing voicemails and sending them to subscribers as text messages. Dubbed Voice2TXT, the feature is offered in plans starting at $4.99 a month for 20 conversions all the way up to $19.99 for 100 conversions (what, no unlimited plan?) with texts sent by the system not counting against users' text messaging allowances. Signing up for the service apparently requires that folks reset their voicemail systems and re-record their greeting, and after that, you theoretically never need to listen to a recorded message again. Alltel's targeting the feature at people that frequently find themselves in meetings and can't take a call, but we have to ask: since you don't need to speak when you're listening to your voicemail, isn't staring at your phone and pressing keys every bit as annoying to those around you as holding the phone to your face?

SpinVox has announced BlackBerry support for its interesting take on visual voicemail, but their version drops the voicemail in your inbox as an email or SMS to read instead of having to dial and listen (or click and listen in the iPhone's case). Unique to the BlackBerry version, the software syncs the callers name with your contacts to let that one click reply thing happen, via email or a call -- cool, right? Apparently RIM execs had a chance to trial the software and were so impressed with what they saw, the trial then became a product. SpinVox is offering a demo version, so if you are inspired to check it out hit the read link.

[Via Tech Digest]

We're guessing not, but El Reg has a piece up squarely accusing Apple of another swipe, this time of the term "Visual Voicemail" to describe the iPhone's voicemail UI. Visual Voicemail, which is owned by Citrix and originally developed by Net6, has been around for years and may (or may not) be what's powering Apple and Cingular's solution for the common problem of having to wait through all the voicemail you don't want just to hear the voicemail you do. And "Visual Voicemail" is, in fact, capitalized on Apple's site, meaning if legit usage of the term or licensed software isn't in the cards, Apple could soon find itself in two simultaneous pots of hot water.