Live voicemail (where Siri effectively answers the call before it goes to your carrier’s voicemail and transcribes in real time) is not geographically restricted to the US and Canada. It just only works with that language setting. Like the early days of Siri if you wanted its full functionality. If you want it you can change your language.
According to Google, Pixel phones had the same US language limitation for the call screening until a couple of weeks ago when they rolled out a pared down manual version to 10 other countries (locked by sim origin), so I presumed this would have been an acceptable caveat for them. Apple will likely expand their’s too with the next major update.
Definitely working for me on the Pixel 8 Pro here in the UK. What doesn’t work is the voicemail transcription - that apparently requires carrier support and EE won’t do it. However, happens after the call is that when you look at the list of recent phone calls in the Phone app, you will see the transcript of the call screen there.
Not sure where you heard that, because that’s not true. It’s language dependent, not carrier dependant (although the carrier does need to support visual voicemail), also requiring US English. The same limitation with iPhone, and changing your language gets you that feature with EE on iPhone. Or it did when I was with EE about 6 or 7 years ago, when it was a new iOS feature that year.
I don’t get calls, let alone voicemails, anymore to check if that still works, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t, and I’d bet it’s the same on your pixel too.
Interesting. I can’t remember where I read that, but the language settings do make sense. The default language on the Pixel 8 Pro is set to English UK. I remember that the call screening was much more limited (e.g. practically non-existent) when I had the Pixel 7 Pro a few years back. So progress has been made by Google. Maybe with Android 15 and the Pixel 9 Pro we might yet see voicemail transcriptions.
Regardless, what’s currently provided by Pixel is still much better than iPhone (set to English UK/UK region) at this time - at least to me.
Yup, the call screening stuff in the U.K. is very very new. When I googled earlier, it was only announced at the end of March this year to start rolling out in April to all Pixel phones. Maybe pixel 8 shipped with it baked in?
I fully expect Apple will expand theirs with iOS 18 too.
I’m not sure what happened with Visual Voicemail transcriptions to remain US English since it was introduced almost a decade ago though. Particularly given that it seems to be the same on both platforms.
I can only guess it’s down to limitations like requiring visual voicemail and limited platform control. The new call screening tech we’re seeing effectively supersedes that feature anyway so I doubt it’ll ever go any further.
It was definitely there on the Pixel 8 Pro when I got mine through EE at the end of February. Given I didn’t get the 8 Pro straight away when it first launched, it may not necessarily shipped with the call screening as it stands today. Given both Apple and Google now tend to release features after the phones and new OSes have been released, I’m happy to wait a few months after initial releases now rather than go straight out and get it on day one.
So, it’s that time of year again when I get my hopes up that Apple might remember some of their older applications and services to give them a bit of love.
Mail is the one currently on my wishlist. I’ve setup my old hotmail account for passworldless login now - but Apple mail doesn’t support it very well (need to setup an ‘App Password’ which seems to randomly just expire - not sure if that’s Apple’s or Microsoft’s fault) so have to have it setup in Outlook instead now. But I really prefer to have Outlook purely for my work email and have my personal email in a separate application - especially on my phone so I know I can ignore any badge notifications over the weekend in that app.
Another ‘wishlist’ idea - expand News+ into Library+ for Apple’s version of Kindle Unlimited and Audible subscriptions.
I do suspect though that I’ll be disappointed on the 11th June…
I’d love a few Android features, like biometric lock on more apps (Mail, etc), and maybe even a hidden/secure folder. With phone thefts and all, it’d be some extra peace of mind.
