Elegant performance, strong support – Acrobits Groundwire Review

Apple’s built-in Phone app should take a leaf from this elegant software! With “raise-to-speak,” a call is on speaker as long as you hold the phone in front of you, and switches to normal private earpiece when you raise it to your ear, and vice-versa. Finger-sized buttons with preferred contacts’ pictures make calling a breeze. Yes, with great power comes some complexity, with settings scattered all over the place, but there are presets for many providers world-wide (hundreds?), including my American and Italian VoIP providers. If you don’t have a preset, be sure you have ONLY the provider’s supported codecs active, and in their preferred order. Support is spectacularly on-target. Send in a log, and they’ll diagnose the problem and suggest a setting change to get you talking again. Most important, though is performance, where Groundwire shines. Anticipating a trip to Ecuador, I bit the bullet and bought the in-app G.729 codec—costs as much as Groundwire itself, but it provided landline-quality connections throughout the trip. On cellular data, you have to answer incoming calls quickly, though, because by the time the push locates and gets to the iPhone, launches Groundwire, and activates the ringer, the call might have reached enough rings to go to voicemail; often in weak signal areas I have to call back, so I’ve increased the time/rings before VM.
Review by Gib Henry on Acrobits Groundwire.