Google launches Voice apps for Apple's iPhone, Palm's Pre

Google Inc launched its web-based Voice apps service to be available on Apple's iPhone as also on Palm's Pre and Pixi phone devices.

The service offers the bulk of the functionality of the native voice apps that Blackberry and Android users already use.

With the new application, users will be able to make calls, send text messages and listen to Voice mail for free, according to Google blog post entries on Tuesday.

Taking a cue from the success of delivery of Google services through mobile browsers, Google decided to adopt the same approach with Google Voice, according to Marcus Foster and David Singleton, Google's product and engineering managers respectively, writing in the blog post.

The new web-based service from Google is an extension of its already existing mobile services for Gmail and Google Calendar which requires users to sign in via their Google accounts.

On the first log, the app asks the user to identify their phone in order to connect to the web site which is required, so that Google knows which number to connect to when the user decides to make a call using Google Voice app.