Grand Central goes mobile, barely

Universal phone service company Grand Central (review) released last night a version of its browser-based control panel designed for mobile phones. It gives you access to your Grand Central voice mail and can connect you to people in your Grand Central address book as well.

Grand Central, now in a handy smart phone-size browser.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Grand Central does its magic via the Web, not through a downloadable app on your phone, which makes the service a bit of a hack on a mobile. When you want to play a voice mail, you have to download an MP3, which on all the phones I know of will bring up a separate app. And when you want to call someone from Grand Central, it doesn't place the call from your phone--rather, the service calls your mobile phone, which pops you out of your browser and into phone mode. When you answer, it connects the other end to the person you want to talk to. And the app doesn't have access to your phone's address book.

I like Grand Central and the release of this site will be important to the service's users. It makes the service mobile-capable, but Visual Voicemail it ain't.

You can try the service on your browser or your phone: grandcentral.com/mobile. The service will be officially announced at the Red Herring conference next week.