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Does anyone know of an app which provides a simulated walkie talkie but over secure IP communication?

I found this one: Two Way : Walkie Talkie

And it probably works, but my partner is on Android and has a phone too new to run the Android version of the same. (Apparently backwards compatibility on Android isn't much of a guarantee?)

Phone calls won't work because we want to use this solution on a trip in a foreign country and roaming is not guaranteed.

So far, Discord is the closest thing we have to a working option, but it is crashprone and particularly on iOS has various audio problems.

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    Hi. What platform are you going to run it on? Have a look at mumble.info
    – Z Z
    Jul 28 at 10:52
  • @Destroy666 my question included an example of an application which does simulate a walkie talkie - your answer claims that you can't simulate a walkie talkie with the majority of phones, but that application did work with a lot of phones, at least at the time. So I'm pretty sure the answer fell over at the first sentence. The truth is, you can simulate a walkie talkie with any device capable of talking to any other device, and it's entirely an issue of whether the application is currently available (which right now, it does not seem to be?).
    – Hakanai
    Sep 10 at 6:57
  • @ZZ I think the platform question is answered in the body of my question already, but yeah, I wonder if Mumble works. The question is more around whether it works like a walkie talkie, as opposed to working like a chat application. Some upfront configuration to allow the two ends to discover each other wouldn't be a deal-breaker, but the application starting up to a screen which shows multiple users would be a deal-breaker, for example.
    – Hakanai
    Sep 10 at 7:00

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Maybe the Switchboard App by Synervoz is what you need. It's a room-based vocal chat app. You will need internet though.

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See their product page, including some videos. From their elevator pitch:

The Switchboard app lets you listen to music together with an open voice/video conversation. The music volume automatically adjusts only when someone talks.

You could just leave out the music part, then it's maybe what you need for a walkie-talkie.

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You can't simulate walkie talkie with majority of phones, as they use different technologies. Radio waves submitted directly between devices are the choice for such trips for a good reason - they can travel quite long distances (at least 1+ kilometer[s]) with a high chance of going through obstacles.

Any solution like Discord, WhatsApp and whatever else that uses internet connection will not have guaranteed connection for the same reason as phone calls - signal could easily get lost. Good quality phone call is actually easier to have than good quality of internet.

There might be also some Bluetooth solutions, but they'll have much smaller range than even the cheapest walkie talkies. As far as I know, Signal can use both internet and Bluetooth.

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  • The signal getting lost is an issue, I'm sure, but it isn't nearly as bad an issue as the usability of the application preventing the other party feeling comfortable enough to get a call through. The entire reason I worded it as "simulated", though, was because phones do use different technologies to real walkie talkies. That doesn't mean you can't simulate it - rather, it means you must simulate it. That's what the word means - to pretend to be one thing, while actually being something entirely different.
    – Hakanai
    Sep 10 at 6:53
  • I mean, sure, you can also simulate moon landing with Unicode glyphs in CLI, but is that a reasonable simulation? If you're just looking for certain features like push to talk (available in way more devices and apps than walkie talkie), you should ask about them specifically.
    – Destroy666
    Sep 10 at 11:13
  • I think that push to talk is part of it. If you look at the application I linked, it resembles a walkie talkie more than just that one feature. The only issue with it was that the Android version was left unmaintained for so long that it no longer even installs. But push to talk alone clearly is not enough. For example, VRChat has push to talk, but it does not behave like a walkie talkie, so it would be the wrong answer.
    – Hakanai
    Sep 10 at 22:34
  • Since you downvoted while I tried to help you, let me be honest - this is a terrible nonsense question. I'll leave the answer here though for people looking for any sort of real simulation, which isn't really possible with a phone with "roaming not guaranteed" condition... Good luck with any answer covering that.
    – Destroy666
    Sep 11 at 0:24
  • I didn't downvote you for trying to help. I downvoted you for saying some nonsense about Unicode glyphs in CLI, and for posting an answer of the form "it isn't possible", which to my knowledge has never been acceptable on here. If you think it's impossible, i.e., if you don't know the answer, then the correct thing to do is not to answer the question.
    – Hakanai
    Sep 12 at 6:47

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