It was a working week day and I’d left my smartphone¹ at my girlfriend’s house and would only be able to retrieve it the following morning.

Fortunately, I had left my phone connected to a power bank². It was also connected to the wireless internet in the property.

How would I carry on working and keep in touch with friends and clients without my SmartPhone?

Amazingly I found that I still had remote access to:

My text messages
Missed calls
Voicemail
Calls to and from my VoIP³ account

As a Virgin Mobile customer, there was no way to remotely forward incoming calls to another number.

Here is how it all worked…

Text Messages and Missed Calls

I have been using an app called MySMS⁴ on my phone since 2015. This is a text messaging app that replaces the standard text messaging app on your phone. It costs about $10 per year.

With MySMS, I was very relieved to find that I could still send and receive text messages. Using the MySMS companion app for a tablet and an extension for Chrome I was able to see continue sending and receiving text messages as well as see my mobile phone call log. Seeing the missed calls I could decide whether I should send a text message, return the call or ignore it.

Phone Calls with Voice over IP (VoIP)

I have a Voice over IP number from VoIPTalk⁵. Back in 2008 I took out this subscription with a Bristol phone number at a cost of £6 per month. It includes 1,000 minutes to landlines. Being already setup up in an app on my smartphone, I needed to set it up on my tablet and computer.

I quickly installed the free app called Zoiper⁶ on both my tablet and computer and configured the VoipTalk account in each app. Immediately, I was able to make and receive calls.

VoiceMail⁷

Using my VoIPTalk account I could now check my voice mail by calling my mobile phone number. The procedure (for Virgin Mobile) is to press * when the voicemail greeting starts then enter the voicemail PIN (setup in the voicemail settings), then press #.

References

SmartPhone – an internet connected phone that is linked to an App store to enable the installation of programs providing extra functionality over normal phone calls and text messages.
Power bank – a rechargeable battery pack designed to provide backup power and recharge a phone.
VoIP – Voice over Internet Protocol. A technology that relays voice (as well as video and text) over an internet connection, typically by dialling a local national number or a toll free number.
MySMS – A text messaging app for an Android smartphone. https://www.mysms.com/
VoipTalk – A VoIP provider. Rent a number so that your internet connected device will ring wherever in the world you might be.
Zoiper – A telephone app for a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer enabling the installation of a VoIP account. https://www.zoiper.com/
VoiceMail – Voice message service used when you are unable to answer your phone.

Custom Setup

I provide a custom setup service for both Android and Apple smartphones so you can release the full potential of your phone. Hopefully in the process you will save time, get more things done and be better connected.

SmartPhone Setup