There are Instant Message, and there are Instant Video Call. Now there is Instant Voice Chat. For those who is not familiar with Instant Voice Chat, I’m actually referring to Push to Talk. The good thing about Push to Talk for the iPhone, or iPad is that you don’t have to immediately respond to the Push to Talk, you can just wait it out, think about it, or don’t answer it at all. Just like Instant Message, you can read it, think about what to reply, or just don’t reply at all. It’s different with Video Call or on a Phone Conversation which is in real time, instant. Where as Instant is actually “Instant”, you can “Instantly” chat, but you won’t get an “instant” reply. The only thing you can call “instant” an instant thing would be instant noodles.
The good thing about having Push to Talk on the iPhone or iPad is that it has a history of the voice chat. You can always go back to it and play it. This app is called HeyTell. An app for the iPhone, and even though it requires you to register your iphone phone number, with the iPad is different. With the iPad, all you have to do is register HeyTell with your email. To add your friends, you can either add by phone number send by SMS or add by email and HeyTell will send the email for you complete with a link to HeyTell. HeyTell is also available on the Android and the voice chat is seamless between my friend with an Android Phone, and iPhone 3GS friend who is half way across the world.
So far I’ve installed HeyTell on two iPhone 4, three of my iPad 2 and iPod Touch 4. Having installed on different iPad’s however requires you to use a different email to register with. Otherwise, HeyTell will be sending both voice chat to both. If you accidentally registered on both iPad with the same email, you can change who you are by going to Profile and click on the Change button. Be sure to set your Privacy Level to at least Medium, so only your friends in your contact list can add or contact you.