I’ve seen some posts about how difficult it can be share a Soundcore product with both a phone and a laptop, e.g. Windows laptop always takes over control even if headphones multipoint connected to phone. There is a workaround which works on all Soundcore products as it does not rely on a particular Soundcore function. So you don’t need multipoint and don’t need multipoint to work.
Overview
- All cellular phones have the ability to forward incoming calls, we use this feature to make incoming calls go to your laptop
- We setup a virtual phone on your laptop
- Connect Soundcore product to laptop
- Incoming phone calls then can be heard on your Soundcore product regardless.
A side benefit of this is you can receive calls even in patchy cellular services, and of course it gives you another “phone” (running in software).
Step by step (examples)
Introduction to cellular conditional forwarding
All mobile cellular services support conditional forwarding. You can forward
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always. This has advantage you can then go away from your phone as calls never come in.
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conditional on no reply. So the phone rings, then after a few seconds the forwarded number rings
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conditional on no reply or no signal. As above but also means if your lose phone signal, the cellular system knows what to do anyway (ring your forwarded number). This is what I tend to do so my phone rings normally and only if no answer or no signal then it forwards. So I can have my phone with me or not, working or not.
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To forward always (advantage if you leave phone far away from you / off) you type
**004forward#
where forward is your number e.g
**004001234567890# -
To then cancel the forward
##004# -
To forward conditionally on no answer (what I do) you type
**21forward#
where forward is your number e.g.
**21001234567890# -
to then cancel (say your not going to be near laptop for a long time)
##21#
You use these by simply phoning the above numbers.
Once you’ve proven this works then create a contact on your phone with these codes and then phone that contact to enable and disable forwarding.
Screenshot of my phone contact which has the forward codes my actual number is masked.
I placed these contacts on my phone home screen
Introduction to VOIP services and clients
VOIP services are country specific. I’ll give a USA and UK example.
Voice Over Internet Protocol is where voice services run over the general Internet. There is presented a phone number which when it rings, the service provider converts the incoming voice into internet data packets, your run a local software on laptop which connects to the service provider and receives the packets and makes sound. Hence if your phone is rung, it diverts to the VOIP number and your laptop then rings.
USA example
- Google Voice allows you to get a USA phone number
- on laptop you go to voice.google.com and tell it to answer using web client
- to setup, login using your Google account and go to voice.google.com
UK example
- I use a service which no accepts signup but show for illustration
- www.sipgate.co.uk
- Get a UK phone number
- use a SIP voice client on laptop. I won’t advocate in a Soundcore forum for a specific client but point to where to begin
- You then configure the VOIP client with your username password of the SIP service you registered with.
Connect your Soundcore product
Pair your preferred Soundcore product with your laptop and connect it. Optionally if your Soundcore product does multipoint you can connect to your phone also, so if you get up and leave home, go away from laptop, then your Soundcore product will then be only connected to phone so even if multipoint doesn’t work well, it will work when home (connected to laptop) and away from home (connected to phone).
Then test it all via
- use your phone to ring your VOIP number, your laptop should now ring and then test microphone and audio quality via alternating laptop or phone on mute and speak to yourself, so mute laptop and unmute phone and speak and hear your voice quality through the Soundcore product. Then mute phone and unmute laptop and speak and hear yourself through phone. Tweak if quality not ideal.
- then do tell phone to forward calls to VOIP and use something else to ring your phone and confirm it forwards to VOIP and laptop rings and Soundcore product can hear it and hold a conversation.
Summary
- You don’t need to have a multipoint Soundcore product, this works with them all.
- Even if you have a Soundcore product with multipoint, this does help with workarounds a few common issues, one is you Windows usually fights and keeps connecting and so even if phone is connected incoming calls don’t actually get to your Soundcore product.
- Enjoy.
If any specific questions on specific VOIP services, probably not best to expand here in a Soundcore forum, we can take to another forum as appropriate to the country.