Poor, unstable, bad user interface – Voalte One Review

There aren't many reviews of this product as it is distributed on hospital owned phones, so I thought I'd download it on my personal phone and write a review. Firstly the positives. You can call some providers and speak to them directly rather than paging them. This is important if your hospital has patchy cellular coverage. Now the negatives. There are many. Number one, the system and application are unstable. Logs you out randomly. Application often just stops working. This can be particularly dangerous at night if you sleep and awaken to find Voalte had logged you off and made you non contactable. We all continue to carry pagers as a safety backup. The user interface is shockingly poor. The app basically only allows you to phone or text. That's it. Say I want to call someone: 1. Open Voalte 2. Click on phone icon 3. Click call 4. Click directory 5. Click on search icon 6. Type in name 7. Find the person. For most people who carry a Voalte phone there will be an icon showing that YOU CAN'T ACTUALLY CALL THEM. Ok so I'll text instead. NO. The app won't let you just text them. This is what you have to do next... 8. Click cancel 9. Click another cancel 10. Click text icon 11. Click New Message 12. Click search icon 13. Type name (THE SAME NAME AS BEFORE) 14. Type message and send Meanwhile the patient has expired. The App function, as I said, is just phone and text. No predictive text or checking. Voalte should have seen how my 1996 Nokia did it. It was far better. Next...you can't alter the ring tone or alert. This seems like a minor thing. However, as soon as a phone rings in a clinical area 5 people grab for their phones. Inconsistent ring volume. Sometimes it goes silent or rings only once. Nobody seems to know why. It amazes me how flakey the system is in a clinical setting. We are so used to having robust technology in the hospital that it seems odd to rely on a system that's not dependable. In summary: clunky, poor UI, unreliable. Does not obviate the need to carry a pager for critical staff due to its unreliability.
Review by Fleshpad on Voalte One.