Google voice will let you phone over wifi. You can even get a google number and recieve calls.
But, I imagine, only on an Android device.
Somehow I finally got the wi-fi to work on the HTC. I still don’t know exactly how I made that happen, but these steps seemed to do the trick:
[ul]
[li] Put in Airplane mode[/li][li] Enable Wi-Fi[/li][li] Wait a couple of minutes [/li][li] Google away! Or whatever.[/li]
[/ul]
And, while that’s the story I’m sticking with, it doesn’t make much difference anymore. Once I got the phone on line I was able to download a Windows app for toggling the Wi-Fi settings.
FaceTime yes, but you can download the Skype app free which lets you make voice or video calls. Free to other Skype users but you have to pay to call regular phones.
Excellent! For the record putting it in airplane mode turned off the cellular radio..and any others that might have been on. I knew that modern phones let you do that and then turn on WiFi manually, but I wasn’t sure about WM6.5, so I hadn’t suggested that route yet. I’m glad it worked out.
-D/a
iPhone as well, I have it installed and working. Since it is a CDMA phone, that is how I made calls from Europe. I think google had to take legal action to make this happen. The phone carriers hate it.
It is the coolness, indeed.
There still are a couple of things I like to use the old device for. For instance, I’ve come across these mp3 files of a Philip Marlowe detective story produced by the BBC, and they won’t play on my Droid. Or to be more precise, only the first file plays, but the three segments of the actual program don’t.
The other thing that works better on the old phone is my email. When I read my messages on this device, they stay read. When I do it on the LG, the messages still appear as “unread” on my other devices.
You imagine incorrectly.
Yes, I’ve been known to imagine certain things incorrectly, from time to time.
And yes, I am watching The Shawshank Redemption, why do you ask?
To be more specific, you are correct in assuming that there isn’t an app for that - but Google was smart enough to put all the workings of Google Voice on HTML5, so that you can create your own web app for that.
I think we got confused as to whether the HTC device was running Android or Windows Mobile. Would I be wrong to guess that you’ve got an HTC Tilt 2? If you do have one, running Android on it is a fairly easy experiment if you have an extra MicroSD card. XDA-Developers has a thread where you can download the latest image and give it a shot.
As far as using Google Voice for free calling, it is available on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad as Talkatone, a free app. There isn’t an equivalent single app on the Android side, but you can cobble together a solution with some combinations of apps. There is a lag on older devices (such as my HomeBrew Android phone), but my newer Android phone, using the integrated SIP client in Gingerbread (Android 2.3) works relatively OK.
The HTC device is Windows Mobile, and the LG device, my current main phone, is Android. The phone I’d most want to use Google Voice, or its equivalent, on is the old HTC, but I can see where it might come in handy on the new phone as well.
As for cobbling things together, like anyone who’s owned a WinMo device for several months, I can probably cobble fairly well by this point. 
Can you confirm which model you have? HTC really didn’t make any good WM6.5 phones for AT&T. Generally you would have been limited to the Fuze, Tilt 2 or Pure, none of which really have the horsepower to do what we are both looking for yet. Maybe when they refine it a bit!
The HTC is a Pure. Not a terribly great phone, but like anyone’s first smart phone, as this was for me, miles better than my old stupid phone.