If you’re an iPhone-loving Google Voice user, you’re probably lamenting the absence of any native apps available to use the service with your device. Maybe you’re even glancing jealously upon your Android-touting bretheren, all with their own native Google Voice application.

Well, covet your brothers no more, for your prayers have been answered! There’s an app that acts just like that! But, don’t go looking in Apple’s App Store, because Riverturn’s VoiceCentral Black Swan (currently in beta) is a new kind of "weblication" that taps into the power of Google Voice in a whole unique way. We were able to get in on the beta process and give MacLife.com readers a first look at the innovative new software, which basically brings Google Voice’s coveted features to your iPhone without any gimmicks. Read on to find out more.

So, What is Black Swan?

VoiceCentral Black
Swan is the next generation of Riverturn’s former VoiceCentral app, which was removed by Apple from the App Store (along with a couple of competing apps) following a controversial rejection of Google’s own Voice app submission (more on that in a moment). Black Swan is unique because it totally bypasses the App Store, as well as the
need to jailbreak your device (which is currently the only way to run competitor Sean Kovacs’ GV Mobile). Riverturn has taken the HTML5,
JavaScript and client-side database abilities of Mobile Safari and
mixed in their own “middleware” layer powered by the Google App Engine. The
result is an extremely streamlined Google Voice app that looks and acts
almost exactly like the real thing, yet allows immediate upgrades
without having to use iTunes or Apple’s proprietary App Store.

What Does it Do?

Almost everything that the Google Voice
website allows, including placing calls through Voice, browsing your
recent call history, listening to your voicemail, read & send free
SMS messages and review your billing & transaction history. You can
even use the service offline to browse your contacts, call history,
voicemail and SMS messages (although listening to voicemails still
requires a data connection).

How Do I Install it Without the App Store?

Installing Black Swan is a snap: You simply go to an installer website, add the resulting “weblication” to your home screen and then click to open it like any other app. Enter your Google Voice login & password information, select your desired callback number from the ones already set up in your account, and you’re ready to go.

How Does it Work?

The app will automatically refresh your recent calls, SMS messages and voicemail. You’re given the option in the app’s settings to auto-refresh this information every 15, 30, 45, 60 or 120 minutes, or never. The settings page also gives you easy access to helpful instructions and an FAQ from Riverturn, how many history items to fetch from the server (up to 50, in increments of 10) and it also shows a running tally of your Google Voice billing credit.

In order to play your voicemails, click the arrow to the left of the caller’s name and Black Swan opens the audio in a standard Quicktime player on your device. Click the blue arrow on the right and you’re taken to details of the call (date, time & length) as well as the option to call or SMS the contact back via the iPhone or Voice. You even have the option to display your own Notes about the call as well as the Transcript, although neither of those are editable from the device itself. Recent calls show the same details, sans the Transcript option, of course.

Click on an SMS from within the app and you’re taken to a familiar iChat-style bubble of your conversation, just like the stock iPhone Messages app. Click on the button in the upper left to create a new SMS message, then click the “+” button to add your contact (or type one in yourself).

It’s here where Black Swan faces its biggest obstacle: Because the app is really a souped-up bookmarklet and not a true app created with the SDK, it can’t access your device contacts. Thankfully, the folks at Riverturn have addressed this shortcoming as best they can, by using the Voice service itself to import your Google address book. If you happen to use Mac software such as Spanning Sync, you can easily sync (and automatically update) your Mac Address Book with your Google contacts and vice versa. You can also use iTunes 7.7 or later to sync in a similar way, although it’s not quite as streamlined.

A Few Caveats

The biggest downside to Black Swan’s use of Google contacts is actually a fault with Google — rather than the option to sort your contacts by last name as the Mac Address Book and iPhone Contacts allow, everything is sort by first name only, which will produce a few frustrating moments for iPhone users used to having them the other way around. Also, because this not a true SDK-developed app, the earpiece of your device is off-limits, so voicemails can only be played back through the speaker or headphone jack. (Calls are not a problem, since Google Voice is actually a callback service and not VoIP.)

Besides those two caveats, VoiceCentral Black Swan — even in its present beta form — works great and delivers as promised. It installed quickly and easily on both our first-gen iPhone as well as our iPhone 3GS, and in most cases seemed even a bit faster at pulling data from Google’s servers than the competing GV Mobile + jailbreak-only app.

A Controversial Beginning

Google Voice was born in 2006 as a free, web-based service called
GrandCentral, giving users a new telephone number capable of ringing
multiple phone numbers at once — home, cell, work, you name it — and
even lets you take a call at one number, then shift it seamlessly over
to
another (for instance, from home phone to cell phone) so you can
continue the call on the go, uninterrupted. The service promised “one
number for life,” including a unified voicemail box, call screening and
much more.

Google
purchased GrandCentral in July, 2007 and it
seemed for some time that nothing would be done with it — until 21
months later, when the service relaunched as Google Voice
(free, but currently available by invitation only). Among the many new
features added to the Voice service were voicemail transcription, free
calls in the U.S. & Canada and cheap international calls.

However,
like GrandCentral before it, the Google Voice service itself was still
tied to a website, and despite a respectable attempt at a mobile version
of the site, it was clear that a dedicated iPhone app would make the
service even more worthwhile.

That’s where third-party App Store
developers came in. For whatever reason, Apple allowed a handful of
third-party
Google Voice apps in the App Store for months prior to Google attempting
to release their own version, which was promptly rejected. But after rejecting Google Voice from the App store, Apple began pulling all the third-party apps, resulting in a veritable firestorm of controversy — as well as
a pending FCC
investigation — that’s been well documented in the media.

Thankfully, independant developers have since managed to figure out a way to bypass Apple’s stringent App Store approval process by writing an application that could be used through the iPhone’s native web browser. Finally, a way to put that Google Voice invitation to good use. Our only hope is that Black Swan is here to stay, though it’s obviously a temporary solution to a bigger issue. 

Well, this all sounds pretty awesome. When will Black Swan be available?

Riverturn’s beta program for Black Swan is currently limited, but promises to open up to more users throughout January and February. If you’re a Google Voice user who doesn’t want to jailbreak your device and is tired of waiting for Apple to get its act together, head over to the Riverturn website and sign up for beta access. While there’s no word yet on what the service may eventually cost, for now the beta is an excellent peek into the future of how developers may get around some of the App Store approval nightmares, and an extremely capable Google Voice app to boot.