We all receive calls daily. It doesn’t have to be from a real person. It could be a bot advertising a service or calls from people you don’t want to take. Either way, we ignore such calls and turn on DND. Other times, we pick the calls for fear of missing out on important information, and there are times we do miss out on urgent details because of this. Google is working to change how you take your calls.
According to recent code found in the Phone app, it seems Android users might be able to tag calls as “urgent” very soon. It might even allow calls to bypass someone’s Do Not Disturb mode. This new feature is called Expressive Calling. It allows certain calls to get your attention when normal calls won’t.
Expressive Calling lets you see the reason for a call. The call reasons include options like, “It’s urgent!,” “News to share,” or “Quick question.” You get to see the call reasons before the phone starts ringing. This way you can know whether or not it’s a call you should take.
The aim of the Expressive Calling feature is to bring urgent calls to your attention. Following that, calls tagged as urgent could bypass Do Not Disturb. This only works if you have the person’s contact saved. It still silences calls from unknown callers. This feature relies on RCS and SMS permissions. Both the caller and recipient of the call may need to turn on compatible apps or features. Without this, the call reason might not show at all.
If you do miss an urgent call, your Android will display a notification to alert you. It could be a message like “Missed an Urgent Call,” so you can return the call you missed. When the feature launches, it might only be supported on the Google Phone app and not third-party dialers.
Then again, we can only wait till the Android release comes. It won’t be surprising if this feature doesn’t make it to Android devices. Google might change or cancel it completely like it did to previous unreleased features. The company hasn’t announced a launch timeline, nor do early versions of Expressive Calling appear to be live for now. If it does make it to launch, Pixel phones might get it first before rolling out to other Android devices.
