C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google appears to be backing down from its long-standing position against letting Pixel phones record voice calls.
- The company has already updated support pages, indicating that the option may exist for Pixel 6 and later models.
- So far we’ve only seen confirmation out of India, and it’s unclear which markets will ultimately get access.
Smartphones may do a million and one different things, but at their very core, these devices are still phones. You may not make a ton of voice calls anymore, but plenty of users still do, which just serves to make it all the more frustrating that voice calls haven’t routinely gotten the same kind of attention and feature upgrades as all the other corners of our phone.
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One space where that’s noticeably true is in terms of call recording — these are fully digital devices, with mountains of storage, and it makes all the sense in the world to let us archive voice calls the same way we do text messages. The varying legalities behind doing so in different jurisdictions don’t help the problem any, and that’s left phones like Google’s Pixel series without the option — at least, Call Notes notwithstanding.
Recently, though, we’ve been noticing Google start paying more attention to call recordings, like the work it’s been doing to implement a new filter for finding recorded calls in the Phone app. And now the company looks like it’s finally ready to address the elephant in the room, and start bringing call recording to Pixel phones, too.
The most visible progress here is on Google’s support page for recording calls. Previously, Google explicitly wrote that you couldn’t use a Pixel phone for recording calls at all. Instead, the company now notes that Pixel 6 models and later may be able to record calls — so long as you’re in a region where it’s permitted.
So where is that exactly? Well, Google’s not really providing an exhaustive (or any) list there, but as far as we can tell, so far not the US. Over on a Reddit sub for Pixel users in India, 9a owner VermicelliObvious807 shares that recording options just appeared in the Phone app, but others aren’t seeing it yet.
Even if this is just getting started and access is still spotty, the updated support pages suggest we really are seeing a big shift from Google here, and we look forward to learning exactly where this long-overdue support will be rolling out.
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