What's the best app to get free phone number? How about WhatsCall?

[Stefano Wright]

Getting ready to travel to US and Canada. Since I'm a little bit tight on budget, I don't want to spend too much money on communication. Instead of purchasing sim card or set my phone on roaming, I asked friends to recommend me a free app to get local number. Has anybody heard of WhatsCall? The download link is here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cmcm.whatscalllite&hl=en

One of my friends has already gone ahead and start his trip, he used WhatsCall and said the connection is great! Not only you can get free us/canada phone numbers for free, using this free number to make calls between two countries is also free.

Any advice, guys?

 

[mikedt]

That's by Cheetah Mobile, and so very likely it will be monetized by lots of ads and by data mining your stuff and selling it to third-parties.

There's Google Voice, which has been recommended and discussed on here from time to time.
https://voice.google.com/u/0/about

 

[Clementine_3]

Google Voice is only available in the US. It works really well but uses your cell number/service to place/receive calls by default, it's really a call forwarding service. You can use it on wifi without a SIM but it has to be tinkered with to set up correctly, it would need the Hangouts Dialer too, (more tinkering). In order to set it up you'd need a real US phone number (you can use someone else's though). Even then only calls to the US and Canada are free so any international calls would cost you (but prices are reasonable I think), and I'm not even sure if you'd even be able to place a call while in Canada.
(I've tried it on wifi and it does work with the HO's dialer)