Can I make phone call with iPad2?

If you are willing to go wifi only, the iPad can indeed be a completely free cellphone. My cable tv carrier has wifi hotspots all over the place, so I am mostly covered.

There is iCall, an ad supported app. Got it working in minutes for outbound calls. Functional, but inelegant. Te better solution is Google Voice, combined with an app like Talkatone. I now have inbound free calls on a unique number, and I also have my cable-phone calls doing a "find me" forward to the iPad!!

No need for a cellphone. I figure I am saving $1000 a year.

This is very useful information! It would have been nice if it could have been answered without all the hatred toward the OP. It doesn't make sense to have a 3G unit that CAN'T take calls, I just wish it were possible to get away from AT&T altogether.

I'm trying to figure a way to kill my home phone line, keep my Virgin Mobile phone but have my home phone number ported to some sort of WiFi device. That way I can have internet, kill my DSL, kill my home phone, save gobs of money and still have two phone lines. The only use for my home phone is fielding political calls and locating my VM phone which gets misplaced now and then. This post - thank you OP - lets me know there are options. Glen I'm going to look into Google Voice, too. Didn't know it existed. Thank you, too!

Why is it that when somebody asks a simple question, rather than giving a simple answer people have to question motives, e.g. why would anybody want to use an iPad as a phone.

Maybe, for a start, they aren't stuck in the same paradigm as the person who feels it neccessary to ask!

I don't have to explain my motives but discovering that iPads can't make phone calls has made the decision whether or not to buy one much simpler.

Thanks. I'll be buying a Yamaha DTXpress IV with the money I nearly wasted! That doesn't make phone calls either but at least it doesn't, as far as I know, pointlessly cripple technology which it evidently has on board.

Good for you.

Stedman

Alf,

Look a couple posts up above this... you can not only make phone calls from an iPad, you can also receive them on the iPad.

There are so many problematic differences between VOIP of one flavour or another and using the iPad as a phone that I cannot begin to list them. But essentially, the point being that I'd like to be able to take a mobile phone SIM and put it in an iPad so that I could use an established mobile number, i.e. one which is already printed on business cards and which has an appropriate call/data plan.

I can't be the only person who imagined having an all-in-one tablet device which could be used as a moble office but I am clearly in the minority.

I am also probably in a minoriy who do not see the iPad's size as an issue here and who are quite happy to leave their phones at home occasionally without panicking.

Well lessee now.

Has an established number that you can print on business cards

Makes calls

Receives calls

Takes voicemail (and in GoogleVoice, does text-2-speech for you!)

Operates from contact list

Sends texts

Receives texts

Just like a phone, the iPad using Talkatone does all those things. What exactly does a phone do differently in your opinion, besides billing you for minutes? Why do you want to fork over hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars annually for an "appropriate call/data plan" when you could keep that money in your pocket?

As for me, the iPad experience with Talkatone is so cool it has driven me to do something I thought I'd never do: Get a cellphone. lol I went and got a Samsung Exhibit II for $200. No contract, pay as you go. But because the VoIP arrangement works so well on the iPad I am duplicating it on the Samsung! I am not putting the SIM into the phone; instead, I'm doing everything via wifi. For me it is like having a small Android tablet.

Anyway, to each their own. The workarounds for what you seek to accomplish on the iPad are there, and they work well. If you choose to use them. If not that's cool too.

clayfrommosinee wrote:

The ipad, iphone and ipod touch are basically the same product. Apple forces you to have two to do the same thing, when each could do the same in one package. I undestand they are not marketed that way, but when will you realise you are being manipulated into using more than one device to do the functions each one is capable of doing by itself. It is a sham and a ripoff of your money.

At last we have it.

The conspiracy theory!

But isn't the whole point of the iPod Touch (which is the best selling iPod) that it doesn't have a phone and is, thus less expensive than an iPhone?

Matt

Wilful misunderstanding!

I said an established number that has already been printed on business cards.

If you don't get that, sorry.

Not from the factory. A shortcoming some wish Apple resolved.

Imagine if you could and take calls via a Bluetooth earpiece. Apparently those at Apple don't have that imagination to 'Think Different'.

Thankfully others do.

Do an internet search under iPad iPhone and in the search put in the religion that is practiced in Saudi Arabia in your search as well.

You will no doubt find some interesting informtion. :)

Nevertheless, the VOIP idea is fantastic as well.

Both my home phone and my work phone are forwardable. Most systems are nowadays. So you could simply forward the "already printed" number to the Google Voice account, and it will ring your VoIP phone. I tested that, and it works. My home phone provider even has a feature called "Find Me" that will ring multiple phone numbers, and transfer the call to whichever picks up first.

So no, it's not a willfull misunderstanding on my part. I get it, and am providing the solutions to your objections.

Well, having asked the question of Google, I discovered that it is possible to make calls using an iPad on mobile/cell networks but only by jailbreaking the phone and using a third party application - but, according to what I have read, the technology is inside the iPad. So, it would appear that Apple have either chosen to exclude the call facility or not chosen to include it - depending on how you like to look at it.

Either way, no sale.

And to answer the call forwarding point, why would I want to buy a product with crippled built in capabilities and then spend time and money to fix it so that it does what it should be able to do another way. It's like saying that you can buy a car but you aren't allowed to use the boot/trunk but you can either use the back seats as a boot/trunk or you can buy a kit which cuts a hole in the boot/trunk so that you can get to it - but which kinda invalidates your warranty.

If you don't like my analogy, I apologise. The question, as far as I am concerned is not how can I circumvent disabled features but why the features are disabled.

A good analogy but let me improve on it...

"It's like saying that you can buy a car but you aren't allowed to use the boot/trunk but you can use the back seats as a boot/trunk or you can buy a kit *that actually allows you to use the boot/trunk as intended and works/looks like it came from the factory but will invalidate your warranty and your car will not be accepted at your dealership anymore*

I am typing this on an iPad with all options turned on (if you catch my drift). It sure makes sense to me!

Conversely, we could say that a Ferrari 308 ought have a trunk. It's a car, cars have trunks, why didn't they put a trunk in there? Do we claim to feel cheated when Ferrari chooses to emphasize the engine and handling, while not bothering about the trunk?

No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. I highly recommend to Alf that he buy neither the iPad nor the iPhone nor the iPod. Clearly, he needs to either go purchase something else or wait til Apple creates exactly the thing he wants and markets it exactly the way he wants. But the question posed in this thread has been answered in the affirmative, and methods have been provided: You can indeed make a phone call with an iPad2.

BTW, if you want it all you go get the iPhone. It has it all.

Well, we all agree that only putting two seats in a Ferrari is a wicked conspiracy by Ferrari to cripple their cars and force us to buy two of them when you want to carry more than one passenger, so that exposes Apple for the demonic manipulators they are in stopping you using the iPad like a phone!

OR try this, the reason you can't use the iPad as a phone is because you do not have a head the size of a beachball, it won't fit in your back pocket and you just look silly trying.

If the original question had actually been 'Can I make phone calls through iPad.' the answer is of course Yes, but then - with or without the Bluetooth - you are using it like a computer, and that is exactly what an iPad is. The OP could even have found that out before their purchase by using an internet search engine. But that would have lost us all the dronings on about Apple's failings, and the whole point of a support forum is to air those, isn't it?