Phone tips for automatically handling voice calls…

Want to deal more easily with spam calls, being on hold, navigating phone menu trees, translating to/from other languages, etc? Cell phones are getting smarter and smarter.

For example, you can have your phone do any of the following:

Incoming Calls:

• Not ring unless caller is in your address book
• Play different ring tones for different callers
• Vibrate only at first, then gradually ring louder and louder
• Read Caller ID aloud
• Automatically answer and ask user why they’re calling, show you the text of their answer and let you choose to decide whether to pick up
• Speak various canned or custom responses to the caller for you (Not now, call me back later, I’ll call you back soon, etc.)
• Since you can see the text of their responses on the fly, and type in your own custom responses on the fly, this effectively turns an incoming call into a sequence of text messages — very useful when you’re in a meeting and can’t afford to speak out loud and be overheard.

Outgoing Calls:

• Call a person in your phone book by speaking their name
• Call any business by name without knowing the number
• Show numbers/meanings of options as clickable text when forced to navigate the number-based phone menu tree of a business you called
• Wait on hold for you and beep when a person comes on the line

Incoming and Outgoing Calls:

• Transcribe call (voice to text) in real time to you can read what the other person is saying (like TV’s “closed captions”)
• Translate speech to/from another language
• Type text and have it spoken to the other person, so you can stay quiet
• Save transcript of call

Some of these features have been around for many years, some are new. May be available only on Google Pixel Android phones for now, or on all Android phones, or on iPhones also. Most good features get copied by all types of phones eventually.

More details:

- https://www.computerworld.com/article/3614863/pixel-features-calling.html

What other cool phone features do you know about? Or would like to see someday?

Enjoy!

— Fred

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Fred Stluka — http://bristle.com — Glad to be of service!

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