Rumors on the future of Google Voice (gVoice) have been abound for well over a year now, with most indications pointing to an eventual consolidation with the G+ Hangouts app, that could be announced at Google I/O soon. As of yesterday 5/15/14, the long awaited closing of the gVoice API (XMPP) to 3rd parties has happened or soon will in the next few days. snrb Labs, creators of Android VOIP stalwart app GrooVe IP, has been warning about this shift for a long time and as of yesterday no longer supports gVoice users. GrooVe IP formerly integrated with the gVoice service via XMPP allowing users to make outbound voice calls over cellular data plans or wifi service using gVoice phone numbers, thus conserving cellular minutes. This is appealing for obvious reasons and delivers on the core value proposition of VOIP. There is also the slightly more complicated SIP client method that requires a bit more setup and has more moving parts on the backend. Any XMPP integration is now dead there too, however.

gVoice has had a good run

Despite the ability to make free calls over VOIP via 3rd-party app integration, gVoice in its current state has a host of other useful features, albeit mostly for inbound calls.

• Cellular voicemail integration/ replacement – in my phone, instead of using Verizon for vmail service, gVoice captures the messages which are then (somewhat poorly) transcripted to text and emailed to me along with a flash audio file. I can play any message from my phone via the voice app, via email or /voice site on any PC. No dialing into a legacy central voicemail service to get messages.

• Multi-ring – gVoice allows users to specify multiple end points to route incoming calls. I could have my cell, my wife’s cell and the house phone all ring when anyone calls my gVoice number.

• Call screening/ blocking – gVoice provides a great buffer and allows you to obfuscate your “real” phone number. Any caller that comes in via my gVoice number must first announce themselves, then I have the option to accept the call, send them straight to vmail, or listen to them live while they leave a message and pick up during if I choose. Just like old-school answering machine screening. You can also permanently block any caller that comes in via the service through a few creative means (not in service message).

• SMS consolidation – gVoice supports in/outbound text messaging too which comes with the same benefits as voice calls in that they show up on your phone and in email. With gmail integration, you can simply reply to a gVoice text message from email and the recipient will get the text message on their device.
• Caller Rules – Another great feature of gVoice allows users to specify calling rules based on the caller profile. If they’re in your contacts list you could: ring all phones, use a personal greeting and don’t screen. If anonymous: ring only mobile, use a generic greeting and screen. Lots of options and customizable possibilities here.

This is the end

Is the end near for gVoice? I certainly hope not, as outbound VOIP calling was far from one of the most useful features I enjoy. Google is an advertising company, first and foremost, and people forget that. Yes they are extremely profitable and lead some of the best innovation of the day, but you have to consider why Google invests in the technology it does. gVoice came out before Google’s speech-to-text initiative, which clearly benefitted from the work done and data collected in gVoice. It was possibly why gVoice was created in the first place! Google invests in technologies to bolster its core search business or related offerings. Once that pipeline runs dry it might kill the initiative or integrate it into something else. gVoice fed the core search business helping to bring voice to that space, which is now a core feature in Android fed Google searches (“Ok, Google”). gVoice has served its purpose for Google. The lack of development effort or improvement to gVoice is pretty glaring at this point. The last update to the Android app was almost 8 months ago and google.com/voice hasn’t changed in a very long time.

Google is still betting big on Google+ and the more it can do to attract and retain users in that ecosphere the better. I use Hangouts on my Android devices but I’m still one of the early Google adopter hold-outs who still does not have a G+ profile. I’ll hold out as long as I can but Google is trying very hard to close the loop and slowly force everyone into G+. At some point, if you want to be social at all in any capacity in the Google universe, you will have to have a G+ profile. Why? Laser focused and relevant advertising based on a wide spectrum view of all of your data. Period. The data Google amasses on its users is extremely valuable to advertisers.

So, what is next?

The future of gVoice and its current features is uncertain. A voice-enabled Hangouts app seems inevitable and a logical step for Google to make. Will most of the features I currently use in gVoice disappear at some point? Probably. With XMPP access gone, apps like GrooVe IP have had to find other means to provide their services. GrooVe IP has partnered with ring.to (backed by bandwidth.com) to carry this torch forward. This will require porting your gVoice number to ring.to or generating a new number via GrooVe IP. SMS is not currently supported with the new solution which is a bummer, but GrooVe says it’s coming. The good news is that you can still make free calls using VOIP on your Android device using your gVoice number if you wish. The bad news is that all of the gVoice integration goodness is gone and it will take the 3rd parties a while to get their solutions up to par.

Check out my other cloud storage posts as well:

• Sync.com
• Box.net

*Updated 3/24/14

Part of living on the bleeding edge of technology is always looking for that better mouse trap. Needs and circumstances change along with the climate we live in, these things drive evolutionary product innovations and robust competition.  No service or offering is perfect so there are always concessions to be made but as long as you aren’t stepping backwards, technological change can be a good thing. I previously wrote about a potential shift from Dropbox to Box, but due to a fatal flaw in the Box offering I moved away from that ledge. (With the Box.net Sync v4 client, this is purportedly fixed, finally, although I haven’t tested. Even still, Box  = unsecure cloud storage since they encrypt contents with private keys they own. Tresorit started with a very strong launch but is now imposing limits that make the offer much less compelling. Read on for more info.

So what’s wrong with Dropbox? Honestly, not much, it is the feature/ functionality yard stick that all other cloud storage providers measure themselves against. The 2 big pain points I see are free storage space and security. It has become relatively easy to get 50GB on competing platforms, so Dropbox providing a meager 2GB with opportunities to increase it to ~20GB with referrals on the high side, is paltry. That said, Tresorit looks to be matching the 16GB possible extra referral space which will net them 3GB more total in the end. Secondly, beyond SSL + 2-factor authentication to access your Dropbox, you are on your own for securing your contents which ultimately reside in the Amazon S3 cloud. Although Dropbox claims to encrypt your files in the S3 cloud, this has proven to be exploitable and remains a problem for them today. Tresorit looks hopeful on solving both of these problems while providing the majority of the interesting features native to Dropbox.

What is Tresorit?

Tresorit is another contender in the cloud storage category with a heavy emphasis on security. Security is the first and foremost consideration of Tresorit, not an afterthought (see the whitepaper link at the bottom). A quick overview of the related nomenclature before we go deeper:

Tresorit (“Treasure It”) is the holistic cloud storage solution centered around protecting personal data in transit and at rest in the cloud.

Tresors are individual folders that have been client-side encrypted and synced up to the cloud.

The technique employed here is very similar to what LastPass does where all data is encrypted client side using a strong secret password and only the encrypted data is sent up to the cloud using secure channels. Tresorit never has your password so only you or those you explicitly share with can unencrypt your data via the Tresorit client. The communication channels use SSL/TLS but the security of this solution does not depend upon it as your data package itself is encrypted. Shared Tresors are decrypted client-side to the people you have expressly allowed access. Important to note that your files are not encrypted locally at rest on disk, they are only encrypted when synced up to the cloud.

Everything happens via the Tresorit client which must be installed on your PC or mobile device. There is no web portal to log into. Account registration and referral processing also happen via the client. Once installed, start creating new Tresors by connecting to any folder anywhere in your local file system. This is one of the cool things about Tresorit: many buckets, not just one like Dropbox. Although I have admittedly grown accustomed to keeping all things cloud in a single folder. Each Tresor will then be encrypted and sent up to the cloud.

Tresorit also handles selective syncing very intuitively: all Tresors disconnected by default. You choose what to sync on which clients simply by choosing to connect to the Tresor you would like to pull down on a given device. I have a 70GB account which is nearly 4x what my Dropbox account is so it is nice that I can selectively connect/disconnect those buckets as I see fit. Dropbox provides selective sync for top-level folders 1 level below the root Dropbox folder. Functionally no different, but Tresorit’s method is cleaner.

Any Tresor can be securely shared with anyone you like with 3 simple permissions to attach to each invitee.  

Any Tresor can be individually disconnected or deleted from the cloud or sync stopped. This is an improvement over the Dropbox offering. Sync can also be disabled globally too, of course. Disconnecting a Tresor from the PC or deleting a Tresor from the cloud does not delete the files locally.

On the mobile side, Tresorit also supports seamless mobile camera uploads, just like Dropbox, which is an awesome feature. Not having a web portal to access your files, however, not only requires you to install Tresorit but to connect and download a full Tresor before you can manipulate any files within it. If you have a space limited device this can prove challenging for obvious reasons. If you have an Anrdoid or IOS device, the Tresorit client on those platforms will allow more granular manipulation without having to first download a full Tresor. You can delete individual files or send a file which will trigger a download, but for that file only. It seems like the same functionality should be eventually brought to the desktop client as well at some point.

New Features (*updated 3/24/14)

Encrypted links allow you to securely share any individual file in any Tresor. Free users are limited in both the number of links that can be created but also how many times each can be downloaded. Not tremendously different than Dropbox’s sharing mechanism but secure and severely more limited.

File activity can now be viewed from within the Tresorit desktop or mobile client. Encrypted links can be generated for the latest version of any active file, however deleted or prior versions cannot be viewed or retrieved.

Plans

There are paid plan options just like all of these types of services but keep in mind the limitations of the free version (which have sadly increased in Q1 of 2014). New limitations have been introduced around the number of devices you can use, monthly traffic, bandwidth speeds and the number of people you can share with (down to 5 from 10). The device limit alone is now a deal breaker for me, maybe not for you. 

Disconnected Tresor sync

To prove that Tresorit could handle a net new file within an incomplete Tresor sync from a disconnected Tresor I performed the following test:

• Disconnect a Tresor folder with incomplete content (only 50% downloaded from the cloud)
• Uninstalled Tresorit client on same PC, reinstalled
• Added new file to existing directory structure 3 folder levels deep (still not synced)
• Connect the Tresor, sync

This performed flawlessly. The PC that had the Tresor with the 50% sync picked up where it left off (despite the Tresorit client being uninstalled/ reinstalled) and successfully pushed up the new file to the other PCs connected to the same Tresor. This is logical and exactly how it should work. Box couldn’t do this (maybe still can’t) which was their fatal flaw and why I felt compelled to test this here.

The one issue that popped up during this test was the fact that when reinstalling the client, it automatically logged into the same account with no prompt for credentials. This is obviously a serious problem if you ever wanted to install Tresorit at a friend or family member’s house to access a file, then uninstall thinking your account is safe. I contacted Tresorit about this and they said the issue will be resolved in the next release. As a precaution, manually logging out of the client before uninstalling would be a prudent step to protect your account.

What Tresorit does well

• Auto-encrypt and sync any folder anywhere on your Mac/PC to the cloud. (not just a single bucket like Dropbox)
• Multi-client sub-folder sync
• Granular selective folder sync enabled by default
• 5GB space for free users (>2x more than Dropbox), bonus referrals of 16GB, opportunities to get 50GB+ (Gone for now)
• Robust mobile client for Android/IOS that includes camera uploads, selective local caching, and passcode lockout
• Actual support! – That’s right, you can open a support request with Tresorit and actually expect an email back in a reasonable time. The staff seems genuinely interested in helping.

Where Tresorit falls short

• Limitations – Number of devices that can access an account, download, bandwidth and sharing.
• No web portal: Tresorit provides no web portal through which you can access your files. If this is possible with LastPass, also client-side encrypted, it should be possible here.
• Full folder download required: Full Tresor download is required to manipulate files on the PC client. Mobile client provides more granularity being able to access, delete or send individual files without downloading full Tresor folder. This applies to sharing as well which is a hassle to have to download 100% of all files in a given Tresor.
• No deleted files protection: There is no mechanism to retrieve deleted files today but the activity mechanism, currently in beta, may be an indication this is coming.
• No device management: There is no way to manage the multiple devices you have permitted to access your Tresorit account. If you lost your phone, for example, the only recourse you have right now is changing your password.
• No MS Office file previews: There is no mobile MS Office file preview which is something only Box does right now. I really like this feature and hope it makes it in at some point.
• 500GB file limits + 20 top-level folder max on free accounts
• There is no way (that I see) to change the master password once it’s been set (As of v0.8.100.133, there is!)
• No LAN sync – very nice Dropbox feature if you use multiple PCs as it copies bit via the LAN faster than pulling everything down from the cloud.
• Timed syncs – Tresorit syncs appear to operate on a timed schedule so are not change aware nor are they instantaneous. Opening the client manually will trigger the sync operation.
• No password recovery – This could go in either bucket really depending on where you stand. Bottom line, if you forget your password, kiss your Tresorit account and all data within goodbye.
• Camera uploads are broken on Android as of 1/5/14. This worked for a short time on a previous build but the Tresorit team appears to be struggling with this one. I’ve re-enabled my Dropbox account for this purpose alone until this gets sorted out. As of 2/21/14, this is working for me!

Off to a good start at first, now wait and see

After several days months of exclusive Tresorit use across multiple devices, I really have no didn’t have too many complaints. The majority of the core features I need are there. PC client syncs are not as snappy as they should be. Dropbox clients keep a persistent connection open to dropbox.com and all other LAN sync clients, so file changes sync almost immediately. Tresorit uses timed syncs which establish and tear down the sync session every time. To force a local sync early, you have to actually open the client which triggers an update operation. I don’t like this. On the other hand, I do feel like my data is secure and I have a huge storage footprint that I can grow further with referrals. This I like. New limitations introduced in 2014 have me rethinking how far I can go with Tresorit now. Of course, if a fatal flaw rears its head, I’ll tuck my tail and crawl back to Dropbox but so far I have no reason to see that happening. Working across several devices daily, I live in my cloud storage so this is important to me and having it secure without taking additional steps is a huge bonus. I’m now debating my options which include Box, Dropbox, Tresorit and Sync.

Feel free to use my referral link if you want to check out Tresorit with some free bonus space: Link

Resources:

Tresorit White Paper: Link

The Google universe is a wonderful place for the advanced user. It’s a pretty damn good place for the non-advanced user too, with seamless integration of Google products and cloud services across devices. Chrome, search, gmail, maps, calendar, drive, voice…all synced with a consistent experience no matter how you access them. Couple these awesome services with a highly customizable and feature rich mobile OS, and you have an almost unbeatable solution. And to think, I used to only want a phone that was good at being a phone!

Most Android-based devices have the same general problem Windows does on PCs, which is that these platforms are allowed to be mucked with by the OEMs that ultimately sell them (read: wireless carriers). While both Android and Windows are great products when properly implemented, the public perception can be less than ideal due to the OEM’s addition of bloat, trial products, customized UIs and other unnecessary additions or changes that negatively impact the overall user experience.

If you buy into the Google Nexus line of products you will get an unfiltered Google experience as it was meant to be but only if your brand name carrier or MVNO of choice is supported there (GSM).  I am one of the lucky few that has an unlimited data plan with what is, in my opinion, the best CDMA/4G network available in the US: Verizon. At the price point my plan is locked at, I’m not giving it up, so sadly no Nexus love for me (yet). No problem, I can take the best selling Android smartphone of all time, the S3, and make it the way it should be. 

The Galaxy S3

In default form this phone comes with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), Samsung’s TouchWiz interface and a ton of bloat courtesy of Samsung + Verizon Wireless. There are some interesting, albeit gimmicky, features centered around motion such as pushing the screen and rolling the phone to jump to the camera or holding and moving icons by turning your body. The phone is plenty fast and the 2100mAh battery life is great, even with the stock softs. To truly make this phone great, it needs zero bloat and Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) in a pure Google experience.

Root, ROM, & Recovery

It goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway: I will be in no way responsible for anything bad that happens to you or your device by following this guide. Following any advice or steps written here will be done so at your own risk or peril.

To reach Android nirvana a few things must be done prior, this is the fun part. The S3 has a locked bootloader from the factory so it must be replaced/ unlocked. The stock recovery is also too limited and should be replaced by the defacto-standard and feature rich ClockWordMod recovery (CWM). There are a couple of ways to go about this, one involves the Samsung Odin tool and reverting to a factory image while the other can be used on OTA builds by flashing bootchains. I opted for the first method which is the cleanest in my opinion. The following steps are how I turned my S3 from good to great.

Step 1: Prep

You’ll need to gather a few items before getting started. I’ll explain what each is used for in subsequent steps.

• Download and install the Official Samsung USB drivers on your PC: link
• Download and extract the Samsung Odin v3.07 utility on your PC: link
• Download the stock VRBLK3 factory image with no data wipe (courtesy of open1your1eyes0 on XDA): link
• Grab SuperSU + Unlocked Bootloader: link
• Download CWM touch recovery flashable via Odin: link
• Download Backup/Synergy zip: link
• Download QPST backup/ restore tool: link
• Download the latest Jelly Bean M snapshot from Cyanogenmod (CM 10.1): link
• Download the applicable Google apps for your ROM (this must match!): link

Step 2: Odin the factory image obtained in step 1

To do this you need to first put the phone in download mode then connect it to your PC via USB.
To reboot into ODIN/Download Mode:

• Make sure your device is completely off
• Key Combos: Volume Down + Home
• While holding both of them simultaneously press the Power button until you see a disclaimer on the screen
• Then press Volume Up and Power to accept the disclaimer
• Once the green robot is visible on the screen this indicates that handset is in now ODIN/Download mode

Once in download mode the screen on your phone will look like this:

Once your phone is connected to your PC, Odin should recognize it and its assigned COM port. Check the box next to PDA and select the no wipe file. DO NOT check any other boxes here or select a pit file. Under options, only Auto Reboot and F. Reset Time should be selected. When ready, click Start.

Once the flashing is complete the phone will reboot and begin the start up sequence. Before you do anything, reboot immediately to download mode again and flash the CWM recovery.

Step 3: Install custom recovery

Recovery is the pre-boot runtime that allows us to easily take nandroids (full system backups) and ultimately load other ROMs. Reboot into download/Odin mode again following the key combinations above. Using the same Odin method shown above, select the CWM md5 file in the PDA field. Uncheck Auto Reboot under options. Click start when ready. Once finished, disconnect the USB cable, pull the battery and put it back in. If you boot to recovery now, you should see the custom touch enabled CWM recovery, which some complain about but I really like.

To reboot into Recovery Mode:

• Make sure your device is completely off
• Key Combos: Volume Up + Home
• While holding both of them simultaneously press the Power button
• As soon as the phone vibrates, let go of the Power button but keep holding Volume Up + Home
• When you see the "Samsung Galaxy S III" logo (not just the word "Samsung"), right after that, the next screen you should see is your recovery
• Don't let go of Volume Up + Home until you see your recovery

Step 4: Unlock bootloader, Achieve Root

This next step is easiest done in a single fail swoop. Each of these items can be addressed individually if desired but since we’re starting from a factory image here, I‘d like to get both done at once. Now that we have the custom recovery (CWM) in place, we will unlock the phone from there. Reboot to recovery and flash the SuperSU_Bootloader_Fixed.zip. Go ahead and perform a wipe/ factory reset now while you’re still in recovery.

Congrats, the phone is now rooted and unlocked. If you have no desire to flash a custom ROM you can stop here.

Step 5: Backup IMEI

This is purely a precautionary step and one that could save hours of trouble later should anything ever go wrong with your device from flashing ROMs. Now is a good time to perform this step, before you flash your custom ROM. Initially the S3 is supposed to have an IMEI backup (nv data) of the device stored locally should this info ever get wiped from EFS. Some had the unfortunate pleasure of finding this to not be the case after bricking their devices and having to go through an arduous process to rectify things. This procedure will properly backup this IMEI info should it ever need to be replaced.

The easy way to do this is by running a command from the phone in the Terminal emulator:

su
reboot nvbackup

• Reboot to recovery and install the Synergy_Backup_HWKeys_signed.zip. Reboot the phone again.
• Install the QPST utility on your PC and connect your phone via USB.
• Follow the remaining steps in this post to backup your IMEI to your PC for extra safety: link

With a local and external backup of your IMEI, you should feel confident to flash ROMs now that you can restore this critical bit of information if needed.

Step 6: Flash custom ROM

Firstly and very importantly, you need to use ROMs for your specific device! These are not ubiquitous across Verizon, ATT, etc. The device codes for all S3 phones follow the naming standard of d2<carrier>. So in my case since I have a Verizon device it’s d2vzw, an S3 on the ATT network is d2att and so on.

There are other ROMs out there but I am seeking a pure Google experience, so I am going with one of the most respected and highest quality Android developers on the planet: Cyanogenmod. Currently Jelly Bean aka Android 4.2.2 aka Cyanogenmod 10.1 is experimental, there is no “stable” ROM yet. That said there are M snapshots which are monthly culminations so are more stable than nightlies which can be very unpredictable. I have been running cm-10.1-20130304-EXPERIMENTAL-d2vzw-M2.zip for several weeks now with no problems whatsoever.

Download the ROM to the internal or external SD card on the phone, reboot to recovery, install zip. Important to note is that Google Apps are not included in the CM builds so these must be flashed in CWM as well. Do this right after the install of the ROM, before you reboot. Once finished, reboot, walk through the initial setup steps and you’re good to go. JB on the S3 is simple, clean, and fast.

Enable Reboot to Recovery

Jelly Bean comes with a few unique changes under the hood from how certain functions worked in previous Android builds. The option to reboot to recovery from the power button menu is notably absent in JB. Developer options are also absent from the system menu which first must be enabled to turn on recovery rebooting. Pains were taken to hide this for some reason.

In the settings menu, go to About Phone and tab the build 7 times. You should see a pop up that developer options are now enabled which will also now be visible in the root of the system menu. Within developer options push the slider to on and check the “advanced reboot” box. Recovery will now be in the power button menu.

Location Services for Maps (GPS or 3G/4G)

This one was tricky and made far too difficult to enable for no really good reason, other than to get you into Google Now. By default even GPS can’t find your location in Google maps. Before any location services can be used they must be enabled in 2 places. The first is in the expected place within the system menu under location access:

It was frustrating to find that even after enabling location access, maps could still not use location data. The other place this must be enabled is within Google Now which can be accessed by tapping the search bar on the home screen or launching the Google Search app. From Google Now, right click into Settings, choose Privacy & accounts, click Google location settings, push the slider to on to allow Google apps access your location. Huge pain to get here. I mean, wow Google, what the hell??! After enabling, maps should now work correctly.

Other items of interest

Another change I’d recommend to make is install the DNS Changer app from the Play store. I use OpenDNS for DNS resolution which is likely faster than your carrier enabling faster web browsing, but also cuts down on their all but certain spying of URLs from their DNS resolvers.

The notification LED on the S3 is very cool as well for custom alerting. Under Settings, System, Notification light, you can change the LED to different colors based on the type of alert desired. For example I turn the light green for text messages and red for emails. Any color you like, any notification you like. This is an awesome feature.

Another useful feature is Quiet Hours under System Settings, sound. Mute notifications, vibrations etc for a given time period.

JB also offers some native hardware overclocking if you’re so inclined. Extreme care should be taken here of course.

Conclusion

Overall I couldn’t be happier with my S3 running CM10.1. The only weirdness at all that I’ve experienced is vertical scrolling in the app drawer doesn’t work and the home button has forgotten itself a few times by opening the running apps list only. Super minor stuff. Functionally everything else works perfectly on this buttery smooth and snappy interface. There should be another M snap released today or tomorrow which I will install the minute it drops. With the S4 right around the corner and the Android devs lining up to say they won’t support it, I’m very happy to have my well-supported S3. It really doesn’t get much better than this!

References:
XDA: Stock Jelly Bean images
XDA: Root, recovery etc for OTA JB
QPST backup of IMEI
ODIN flashing guide