About this time last month, I was in need of a way to record a cellphone conversation. While there were a few options under consideration, I turned to the community and asked: Can you record a cellphone conversation?
Here is a recap of the methods that were being considered:
- Buy a new cellphone that can record. While there are cellphone models that do offer the ability to record a conversation, I’m not a fan of paying big bucks for a cellphone so this was not an ideal solution.
- Use speaker phone and record the conversation. While this technically could work, my results were less than stellar. Maybe it is because my current cellphone – see comment above – is somewhat old but the volume and crispness of the recording was lacking.
- Buy a recording device to use with my cellphone. Again the results were less than stellar, although the quality here may have suffered as a result of the headset that I purchased. In addition, the number of components required made this somewhat cumbersome for my purposes.
After testing two of the three options with lackluster results, I wasn’t quite sure what to do in order to get the best results.
Then I remembered that a friend of mine had sent me an invitation to Google’s GrandCentral service. After signing up for the service, I noticed that they offer the ability to record conversations.
Score!
Thinking that I had found my solution, I was relieved and ready to record my first conversation. What’s that? You can only record incoming calls?
Damn!
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Given that the reason I had been exploring the possibility of recording a cellphone conversation was to record an interview, I could not exactly request that the other party call me in order to record the incoming call.
Not one to give up on a challenge, I began to think about how I could still manage to pull this off using GrandCentral’s ability to record a cellphone conversation. After a few Google searches proved to be useless, it hit me – I could use our “home” cellphone to call my cellphone, start the recording, and then conference in the other party.
While this scenario ultimately ends up in using double the minutes on the cellphone plan, I was able to test it and it worked great. The recording is clear and crisp – and saved online for me to access from my Google GrandCentral account.
Google has now announced that you can get a GrandCentral account as long as you have a Blogger account – thank you Janet, as seeing your post reminded me to write this follow up. In the event that you don’t have a Blogger account and don’t want one, drop me a line and I will see if I can send you an invitation to sign up for a GrandCentral account.
Should you find yourself in a position where you need to record a cellphone conversation, you can try one of the methods that I mentioned earlier and hope for better results – or you can sign up for Google GrandCentral and utilize their feature to record a phone conversation.
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Note: Google GrandCentral no longer offers the ability to send invitations. Please stay tuned for any further updates.
{ 47 comments… read them below or add one }
Although GrandCentral sounds like a nice service, it also sounds pretty scary, don’t you think?
Bit of a techy here.. I had the same requirement just the other day and I went for a slightly cheaper option. Well cheap for the level of quality. Basically I used skype but with a add-on call recorder software. Okay you have to have skype out credit but they allow you to call most countries very cheaply. While there are a few free call recorders for windows (or even easy methods to do it using built in sound recorder), it was a bit trickier for mac and I had to fork out $15 for it. But for crystal clear quality I thought it was pretty useful!
I had the same idea of using skype and some software to record the conversation, but Derek’s solution shows some great thinking outside of the box.
The issue that I faced with Skype is that I could not guarantee that I would be at a computer at the time of the call. Normally this would be a possible solution but it didn’t provide me with the flexibility that I needed.
Hello Derek,
Can you please send me an invite to GrandCentral. I’m a techie guy and I’d love to acquire something new to play around with. Plus this seems really cool.
Thank you in advance for your help!
Billy
Billy,
Thanks for expressing an interest. Unfortunately, Google has removed the ability to send out invitations to GrandCentral. The speculation has been that they were preparing to release the service for everyone to use, but nothing has materialized yet.
I apologize that I cannot help you out.
As long as you have time to do either of the two options, conference call or skype, they are fine. When you need to record an incoming call of both sides of the conversation, say when you are out of your home or office, there is no option but to get a set that will record. I had to have such a set to trap a pest and it worked like a dream.
I purchased a Uniden a while back that allows for call recording. The line beeps when it’s activated, so it’s not too covert.
Good thinking Derek. Thanks for the info.
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That’s pretty crazy on how you can do that. My phone has the capability to record conversations and it just makes me think that nothing you say is private anymore especially over the airways.
Whenever they say “This conversation may be recorded for quality purposes.” you can actually view this as permission for YOU to record.
What kind of phone do you have with the capability to record cell phone conversations?
What phone do you have? I have been looking for one with this feature and have been unable to find one.
Cool trick. Should try it out sometime.
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Some really good ideas here. Have a look at some of our cellphones that you might want to use:
http://www.airtimemanager.co.uk/controlcosts/monthly_contract_phones_services.aspx
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Great Post, Thanks….
Tim Keen,
http://www.ezedir.com/Article/
Not sure why it hadn’t occurred to me to use GrandCentral to do this before, but I just took a look and it’s a snap.
And…if you need to do this again, if you go to GrandCentral, you can make the call from there. Click2Call will actually let you do what you did without having to use double minutes and conference from one cell to the other.
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If im not mistaken that cell phones the record, there is a contstanrt beeping in the background.
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I believe SpoofCard can be used for this too, even though it’s primary purpose is to falsify caller id. Of course you would have to be making the outbound call.
Well I have da g1 goggle phone and I’m getting threathen phones calls I wanted to kw how can I record it
this page is perfet. thank you
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Are there laws against recording phone conversations? Or, is it legal if the both parties know they are being recorded?
Here in the United States, it depends on the state that you (and possibly the other caller) are in. Some states only require that one party be aware that the conversation is being recorded while other states require both parties be aware of the recording.
As always, be sure to understand your local laws.
I think this is where VoIPs become handy. You have the opportunity to record phone conversations.
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this really comes in handy, some newer phones all you have to do is press a button.
Does anyone know if this is legal in the UK?
you can also try recordiapro. they also let u record incoming calls- they have a cool way to record blackberry calls.
also to record iphone calls for incoming calls.
I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to record someone without their permission in the UK. The amount of times this would have come in handy…
You can record phone conversation but be sure you have the consent to do such thing.
Required consent depends on your location and is off the topic, “How to Record a Cellphone Conversation”
My friend showed me this website where you can spoof your caller ID, it decodes blocked numbers for you, and lets you record phone conversations. I am trying to find the link but am not having any luck.
The website is spoofapp.com…unless you have an iPhone. Apple decided that they would not support this application.
SpoofApp was rejected by Apple for inclusion in the App Store after being stuck in review for 192 days. Apple said: “We’ve reviewed SpoofApp and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because it allows users to anonymously make calls and/or wrongly identifies the Caller ID of the phone (known as Caller ID spoofing). We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.”
SpoofApp is officially too controversial for the App Store.
I have used a software called ‘Total Recall’ on my phone. It’s a great software. It has good features and is quite reliable.
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Hi I would very much like to start a google account such as you mentioned. Anychance you can drop me a line on yahoo?
Removed email address
Brandi, I have removed your email address from the comment to help prevent your address getting scraped by spammers. As for the Google account, Google has recently decided to cancel the GrandCentral and move over to Google Voice. As of right now, I don’t have any invites.
A recording device could be useful for some situation but on the other hand one should be cautious about it. It can be use to retrieve your personal conversation.
Thanks for the post
Andriy
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Thanks for the great article.
I use WM Sound Recorder to record my HTC Touch Pro phone conversation. It could record
outgoing and incoming calls automatically.
I am about to look into GrandCentral. I did successfully record a conversation (both sides) by getting a cell-to-mini adapter and plug in an inexpensive Olympus digital recorder into the cell phone. Keith, Southern California
This Article is 2 years old but still going strong on the comments.. Nice job
Comments and the organic traffic for this post is amazing. It is consistently among the most visited posts on the blog every single month.
This is great Derek, thanks. I’ve been having trouble with abusive callers and this shpould help sort it out
Thanks Derek for sharing such a nice information. You have a really brilliant idea for recording incoming and outgoing calls I definitely take a try with Grand Central. Thank you.
my phone has built in recording function.
Is there anything that google can not do? I never heard of Google’s grand cental app. I was just looking around for a recording option and found your blog. This is pretty cool stuff!
Phones these days come with built in recording capabilities… Nokia E Series for example is equipped with the recording capabilities, although the duration of recording varies from model to model…
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