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I hate to push products, but happiness is the Call Screen built into Pixel phones. If it feels the call might not be spam, I still have the option to screen it
by binkHN 3y ago
I hate to push products, but happiness is the Call Screen built into Pixel phones. If it feels the call might not be spam, I still have the option to screen it and watch the party converse with the Google Assistant in real time—kind of like the answering machines of old, but you can read instead of listen.
- thanhhaimai 3y agoThis so much. I don't remember that spam calls exist anymore until I read a post someone complaining about getting spam calls. It works so well. I haven't had a false negative in the 3 years of using it. All the people who truly wanted to contact me would say something into the assistant, and the phone rang, and I'd pick it up.
- onedognight 3y agoApple does this as well, but this is a Band-Aid. Think of the old people who get scammed by these calls. This is a system issue and should be fixed as such. It’s frankly embarrassing how the phone companies have effectively killed the “phone call” through their neglect.
- luma 3y agoNope, not quite public yet. Google has had this for years but Apple is just now about to get it with the release of iOS 17 and "live voicemail". Still have a month or so before that's out of beta.
- p_j_w 3y agoI’ve recently gotten an iPhone (coming from a Pixel 7), and it’s honestly not in the same league for dealing with Spam calls. It’s much more of an annoyance since I switched.
- Nextgrid 3y ago> phone companies have effectively killed the “phone call” through their neglect. They haven't - they're still making bank on the spam traffic, which is also why they're reluctant to implement solutions despite it technically being trivial. If phone spam was actually making a dent in revenue (aka legitimate call revenue was going down and the revenue from spam wasn't making up for it) they would've got their act together very quickly.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- neeleshs 3y ago100%. Call Screen and the usual spam detector in Pixel has made call spam a non issue. I also don't pickup any calls that are not from my phonebook and let them go to VM/assistant, and listen to them immediately.
- notatoad 3y agoFor my use, 99% of the time i just leave my iPhone set to silently reject all calls from unknown numbers, and that works for me. it's pretty rare that there's somebody not already in my contacts that i actually want to be able to call me. they can go to voicemail, and i'll deal with it later.
- TylerE 3y agoI would do that, but my doctors office seems to have at least 100 phone lines, and the number that shows up on the caller is basically random after the first 4 digits.
- pixl97 3y agoQuite often you'll find that the doctors office is part of a larger system for an entire medical center. Your call can get routed out any open physical line. These days fully VOIP systems will mask the number as the primary, but some systems still have physical connectivity to the phone companny.
- renewiltord 3y agoIf you use Google Fi, you just view the voice transcript and then call back.
- TylerE 3y agoOh I wish. I’m in Optimum (Former Suddenlink) territory. It’s only in the past year I was able to upgrade from 300mbps to gigabit, and it ain’t fiber. Also obvious that the local techs have no clue what they’re doing since the link goes down several times a night briefly, always at exactly 15 minutes after the hour. It’s obvious there’s a switch or something that they’re just rebooting every night.
- lamontcg 3y agoGoogle Fi != Google Fiber One is a cell phone plan, one is an ISP.
- kevinventullo 3y agoThis is the one feature I really wish iPhone had.
- coder543 3y agoiOS 17 won't be bringing the automatic call screening, but it will be bringing the ability to send calls to "voicemail" and screen them yourself, picking up if you feel like it's worth answering.
- Laremere 3y agoHonestly, this is what I wish Android's call screen was. Call screen starts by explaining itself, which I think could waste time, can be confusing, and possibly is insulting. Compared to a quick "Hey please leave a message after the beep." I want to be able to send basically all unexpected calls to the screening, and only pick up if it's something I want to respond to right now. It feels rude to, eg, send a neighbor to a call screening service when I definitely have their number but don't want to drop what I'm doing to hear them complain about something.
- ghaff 3y agoOr I’ve seen something that they should probably deal with sooner rather than later. But heh. Don’t interrupt me. That’s the main thing.
- brirec 3y agoIn my experience (with the beta), live voicemail actually replaces carrier voicemail whenever possible. This means that if you ignore (or even miss!) a call, it’ll record and transcribe the call as a live voicemail anyway. So I’m not sure what Google’d call screening provides above this (unless all unknown calls get sent to the call screening? You can tell iOS to “Silence unknown callers,” which does still ringback a few times before recording a what I presume is a live voicemail) And at any point during the voicemail you can answer the phone anyway. Of course, if you get a call while you have no signal it’ll just go to carrier voicemail. (Recorded live voicemails and carrier voicemails are played back from the same screen, so this is no more complicated to navigate than before.)
- cdchn 3y agoPretty much the major thing preventing me from switching to iPhone at this point.
- gochi 3y agoCall Screen is a nice addition to global call control (or whatever it gets renamed to per carrier), that just prompts callers with a simple "press this button to continue the call". Went from every day at least a dozen calls mostly from spoofed numbers, to only getting the important ones. Call Screen winds up being just a nice cherry on top.
- cozzyd 3y agoIt's helpful to have a cell phone number from an area code across the country, then it's usually easy to tell likely spam calls (in my case usually 775 or 702) from legit calls (which for me usually are 312 or 773). There are also spam calls from random area codes but I usually don't answer those...
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoThis should be required reading for any founder. And getting a 2nd burner google voice number that you never pick up (but you use for 2FA calls)
- NovaDudely 3y agoMy solution is a little more analog. If the number isn't in my phone, I don't answer it. If you don't leave a message, I will never follow it up.