Google remembered the phone part of the smartphone - The Verge

Google has officially announced the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro with a big emphasis on phone calls. Clear Calling, Direct My Call, Call Screen, Wait Times, and Hold for Me are all designed to help with the most fundamental feature.

The Verge homepageThe Verge homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo./Tech/Reviews/Science/Entertainment/MoreMenuExpandThe VergeThe Verge logo.MenuExpandGoogle/Tech/Google PixelGoogle remembered the phone part of the smartphoneGoogle remembered the phone part of the smartphone / A surprising number of the Pixel 7’s flagship features focus on making phone calls a more pleasant experienceBy Jon Porter / @JonPorty

Share this storyThe new Pixel 7 Pro. Image: GoogleWatching Google officially announce the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro yesterday, I was struck by how much of its presentation focused on the most fundamental of smartphone features: the phone call. Smartphones may have become miniature handheld computers, capable of doing everything from office work to filming movies, but Google refuses to forget about the phone part of its smartphones. How refreshing.

“Pixel 7 is designed to be the best phone for actual phone calling,” said Google product manager Brian Rakowski from the stage, before outlining the specific improvements coming with this year’s Pixel. There’s Clear Calling for improving the audio quality of voice calls and an upgraded Direct My Call to make it quicker and easier to navigate call center phone trees. Other features returning from previous Pixel devices include Hold for Me and Call Screen.

The most fundamental feature to help with phone calls is Clear Calling, hints of which were discovered in Google’s beta software last month. It’s designed to use machine learning to cut down on background noise from persons on the other end of a Pixel 7 phone call, making them more easily audible, “even if they’re on a windy street or in a noisy restaurant,” Google product manager Jonathan Eccles writes in a blog post. 

Google is far from the first company to implement noise suppression technology like this. The likes of Nvidia and AMD already offer similar functionality on PCs for conference calls and streaming. But unlike Apple, which hasn’t made a big deal out of its Voice Isolation feature and hides it in an obscure sub-menu, Google presented Clear Calling front and center during its presentation as one of the Pixel 7’s flagship features. 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/7/23392422/google-phone-calls-pixel-7-features

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