Review Date May 30, 2013

RingCentral (for Android)

  • Pros

    One-screen interface to view and search through all calls and texts. Can access main settings on RingCentral Web interface. Adds mobile phone to RingCentral PBX.

  • Cons Easy to mistakenly exit the app with the phone's Back button. App keeps having to sign into the server. Can't maintain a separate Contacts List.
  • Bottom Line


By Fahmida Y. Rashid
Clicking on the message item opens up details about the call. I could listen to the voicemail recording, send a text message reply, return the call, or delete the voicemail. A triangle menu at the top (the same place the Edit button was on Message screen) displays more options, such as forwarding the message, marking the message as new, and saving the caller number as a new contact or adding to an existing contact. There was no way to do a long-press on this screen, or anywhere the phone number is displayed within the app, to copy to clipboard and use elsewhere. 

Making a call felt slightly convoluted. When I wanted to make a call, I clicked on the phone icon in the app, which opened up RingCentral's own dialer. I would have liked to see the app just use the built-in dialer instead of the RingCentral's skinned version. Some people may prefer the visual cue that this is a RingCentral call and not a personal one.

When I hit the call button, it displayed a "Now calling" screen with the phone number I was calling along with the RingCentral number that the recipient would see as Caller ID. There was a bit of a lag time between when I said to Call and when the phone actually rang, but that is more likely the fault of my network and not the app. Overall, the voice quality was clear making calls over Wi-Fi.

The app also skins the contact list to fit the app's overall color scheme. All the names are the same as the actual contact list; it just looks entirely different. Yet when I was adding the contacts, I was adding directly into the phone's contact list using the default interface. There was no way to keep my personal contacts separate from people I would be contacting using RingCentral. This seems like a missed opportunity. RingCentral makes it easy for employees in the field  to still keep their work persona when contacting clients; wouldn't it have made sense to keep work and personal contacts separate? The "Company" tab on the Contacts list just displays all existing users in the RingCentral system. I couldn't figure out a way to add any numbers onto the "Company" list at all.

The fact that I switched from the app into the phone contacts list and back to the app was visually jarring, especially since that isn't how RingCentral handles the interface to make a call or sending a text message.

Through the App Settings screen, I could switch to 3G or 4G if I didn't want to rely on Wi-Fi. I also had the option to turn off incoming calls from the app settings screen to conserve battery power. I could also calibrate the microphone. Clicking on Extension Settings, as mentioned previously, took me to the Web interface, where I could configure my entire RingCentral experience, such as recording a voicemail greeting.

The app's interface takes care of several basic tasks. I could just type the name or number of the contact in the contacts list to bring up the relevant person. I can also do a long-press on the contact name or the item in the call log, at which point, I could call the person, send a text message, mark as new, delete, forward, and save the number to the contacts list. There doesn't seem to be a way to launch the app externally, as when I click on a phone number on a Website or in an email, there is no way to specify that I want to use RingCentral. I could, however, copy and paste the phone number in to the app. 

My biggest trouble with the app arose because I kept pressing the "Back" button on the phone instead of using the app's button. Sometimes the phone's "back" pushed me back a screen, and sometimes it took me out of the app. Sometimes it took me back a few screens. If I was looking at Contacts, Favorites, Call Log, or Messages when I hit "Back," then it exited the app. I had to remind myself continuously to use the app's button instead. 

Other than the app's mainly quirky features, the RingCentral app makes it really easy to set up employees who don't have a desk phone and don't want to just have the calls forwarded to their personal phone. The app turns a personal device into a full-fledged extension, which is important if you have a lot of mobile employees. There are a few other VoIP apps out there, but not as fully-featured as RingCentral. For now, RingCentral for Android earns three stars, but it could do better if offered a true division between work and personal calls, and if a few of the interface quirks were resolved.

Fahmida Rashid
By Fahmida Y. Rashid


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