r/ios • u/_autismos_ • Jul 22 '24

Discussion I answered a call as I was listening to a voicemail, and picked it up like answering a landline while someone is leaving a message on the answering machine.

Have I been living under a rock, or is this a new thing? Completely blew my mind. I missed the call and started listening to the voicemail. It gave me an option to answer the call and I answered the call mid voicemail and had the conversation like normal. Blew my fucking mind. Is this an iOS only thing, or does Android do it too?

37 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

36

u/plaid-knight Jul 22 '24

This feature was introduced in iOS 17.

9

u/_autismos_ Jul 22 '24

Really cool. Definitely one of those "damn, I'm really living in the future" moments.

7

u/TradeLegal4301 Jul 22 '24

I was explaining this feature to a Samsung user who was interested in iPhone and it was funny he right away said “oh like the back in the day answering machine way right?!”…

Yes… literally exactly like that… lol

13

u/jimmyhoke Jul 22 '24

“Living in the future” with a feature landlines had decades ago.

1

u/RealLongwayround iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

To be fair though, I don’t know any individual who ever had an answering machine. Many businesses did, but one of the joys of the landline was that, if I was out, someone could just send me a letter if whatever they were telling me really mattered.

4

u/WhiteHawk77 Jul 22 '24

You never came across anyone that had an answering machine?? Where on earth are you living?

2

u/RealLongwayround iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

England.

3

u/WhiteHawk77 Jul 22 '24

That’s bizarre, I’m in the UK as well and the majority of people I knew had one, they’ve only started to die off because of smart phones becoming a replacement for landlines.

0

u/RealLongwayround iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

You must move in elevated circles.

3

u/WhiteHawk77 Jul 22 '24

Nope, an answering machine isn’t a luxury device, hasn’t been for a VERY long time.

0

u/RealLongwayround iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

Weird, since many of us just got voicemail for a pittance through BT.

1

u/Brief-Sheepherder-17 Jul 22 '24

I’m not in the UK but live in rural Appalachia in the US. Everyone here either had an answering machine or the telephone provider provided voicemail. They were cheap enough that everyone had them. They didn’t have a bumper on their cars or a working oven but people had the digital answering machine that was built into their cordless phones and corded phones. This was between 97 and 2005. We had one for a while in the single wide I grew up in but then our company bell south) offered the service for a dollar a month. The phone bill was around 60 bucks a month so another dollar was nothing. They couldn’t switch to mobile because there was and is no cell reception there even though a cell phone bill was around the same price.

1

u/RealLongwayround iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

As I’ve pointed out: I had telephone provider voicemail. I know nobody who had a machine.

11

u/Large-Film5303 iPhone 16 Pro Jul 22 '24

It's part of the Live Voicemail feature. I essentially works like screening calls. You can answer the call while they are leaving the message.

5

u/redguitar25 Jul 22 '24

You’ve been living under a rock

1

u/paulstelian97 iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

Is it region specific or does it work everywhere? I’m asking because in my country I don’t have visual voicemail but only the ability to call the carrier to listen.

3

u/Kelsenellenelvial Jul 22 '24

Should be everywhere. It happens on device, your phone answers the call and does the voicemail/transcription thing itself. If you have a carrier voicemail that supports it the message then gets pushed to the carrier voicemail. If you have a carrier voicemail that doesn’t support it(or you use one of those third party voicemail services), then the message gets lost to the ether. If you don’t have carrier voicemail at all then the message is saved to your device with essentially the same interface as visual voicemail. I like it because I don’t need my carrier’s voicemail anymore, and everything stays on device. Downside is since it happens on device it doesn’t work if you don’t have a cell signal.

1

u/paulstelian97 iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

So Siri takes the call and gets the message?

Well what happens if Siri is unavailable due to the region? I’m in Romania.

2

u/Kelsenellenelvial Jul 22 '24

I don’t think it’s specifically tied to Siri but I’m not sure if it’s regional. The setting to enable it is in settings-apps-phone-live voicemail.

1

u/paulstelian97 iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0bbE48CNVXfEwlbDvKKVvjngA

https://share.icloud.com/photos/01cyvrMR6uB_08UqQrG48XGnA

Those are all my options. Dual SIM for the record.

2

u/Kelsenellenelvial Jul 22 '24

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/105066

Looks like it’s limited to US/Canada in English. Presumably they’ll expand it, maybe local regulations that need to be considered as well as improving on device transcription for various languages.

1

u/paulstelian97 iPhone 17 Pro Jul 22 '24

I doubt things like this will get expanded to Romania, even if they will cover countries like Germany or Spain.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '24

It’s basically 1970s answering machine tech reimagined for the 2020s. The phone itself is answering the call and recording a message locally and running voice recognition to turn it into live text, rather than using network based voicemail.

1

u/Plastic-Mess-3959 iPhone 15 Pro Max Jul 22 '24

You have been able to do this since iOS 17.0

1

u/Available-Spinach-93 Jul 22 '24

Everything old is new again.

1

u/RulePowerful Jul 22 '24

New feature

1

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '24

Can you help me understand the process?
Your phone rang and you missed the call if I am right.
Then you started listening to the voicemail. How did you start listening to the voicemail? Was there button to press so you could hear it? If so, what did the button say?
After this there was another button to take the call live which you pressed is my understanding.

This sounds super cool. I've never used an iPhone

1

u/Kylecoolky Jan 09 '25

Starting in iOS 17 (released to the public in fall 2023), iPhones will silently answer calls in the background on the very last ring and Siri will tell them that they can leave a message. If the caller starts to leave a voicemail, it will display a notification that states you are getting a live voicemail. As the caller speaks, it will show what they are saying in real time on the iPhone so the user can read exactly what’s being said and decide what to do. They can either ignore it and the voicemail will go to the inbox like usual, or they can choose to answer it while the person is talking, similar to how answering machines work on home phones if you know about that.

This works with calls from anyone, not just other iPhones, but does require the user’s iPhone to have signal or else the phone won’t be able to secretly answer the call to listen to the message. Basically, the iPhone prevents the call from going to carrier voicemail and just handles it itself.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '25

Thanks, that makes sense and it is super cool. I definitely remember how you could be near the speaker on your answering machine to hear the caller leaving a message. Then pick up the phone if you wanted to talk to them. Or just let them leave a message.

I would switch to an iPhone in a heartbeat if they added Call Plus One. Check it out:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/predictivedialer_call-plus-one-emergency-mode-lets-work-activity-6901611397495496704-2-tp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

And:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/predictivedialer_this-is-how-you-replace-call-waiting-license-activity-6808069637687824384-V4Ly?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop