The phone is dead. Long live… long live what, exactly? It has often been said and written that the smart phone ended up burying the digital organizer, the camera, the alarm clock… and now it threatens the very existence of the phone.
It’s crazy what can happen in a month in the world of technology. Between the months of May and June, Apple and Google, which form the monopoly of global mobile telephony with the iPhone and the Android system, presented the novelties that they intend to add to their mobile devices over the next year. .
For people who like to spend hours on the phone, the news is not good. For people who are impatiently waiting for a call after leaving a message in a loved one’s voicemail, things are looking bad. For telemarketing professionals too. At least, those, no one will regret not talking to them anymore…
Read aloud
Apple has just spent a few days presenting to programmers and creators of all kinds of applications the new features to come for its many computer products. The iPhone has had its fair share of new features. Most target the three main communication functions of the device.
“FaceTime’s phone, messaging, and video calls are getting a ton of new features in this update that our users will love,” Apple software tycoon Craig Federighi said on stage. “We hope to make iPhone more personalized and intuitive than ever. »
One of the ways to personalize your mobile experience will be to add a large photo of yourself (or any other image, for that matter) to your own contact card and write your name on it by choosing from a selection of fonts and colors that aim to make unique the way we will appear on the screen of the people we call.
The person on the other end of the line (or wireless?) will see all of this when they pick up. She can answer, orally or by text message, or transfer the call to voicemail.
This is where it gets interesting: if a message is left in the voicemail, the iPhone will offer to transpose in writing what the caller has recorded, and will transmit it to the user so that he can read it. all with a clear head. No need to put your ear to the handset to take messages. In fact, you don’t even need to answer calls anymore: leave a voice message after the beep, we’ll read it later…
Your call is important to us
Apple is not inventing anything with this new function. Google has been offering much the same thing for several months on select Android devices, including the newest version of its Pixel line of phones. In both cases, however, the function is limited to English. To take advantage of it, you have to set the language of your phone to English, of course, but the messages left in the voicemail must also be in English. We are assured, both at Apple and at Google, that transcription of voicemails and even live calls will be offered in other languages – including French – as soon as possible.
That said, Google takes automated call handling a step further to make the experience less of a pain. Perhaps that’s why so many people are eager to trust automated tools to manage live voice conversations: because it’s not as fun as we’re led to believe.
On the side of Google, we seem to have understood that some calls are more unpleasant than others. For example, when we are put on hold. Your call is important to us, we are assured too often before replaying the same particularly mediocre, but royalty-free song for the umpteenth time. Imagine if in addition it was an earworm…
The Google Assistant therefore offers to keep the line for us. When someone on the other end picks up, the phone emits an audible or vibrating alert. We can return to the call without having lost several minutes of a much better busy life elsewhere than in the virtual waiting room of a multinational not in such a hurry to talk to us in person.
The Google Assistant can also answer for us. Handy when you don’t recognize the number (or, soon, the large full-screen personalized image with name in color…). We can therefore entrust the Assistant with the task of picking up and asking who is calling. You can then decide to answer in person or to pass.
How to hang up your phone
If you’re on Android, you too can customize your wallpaper a little more later this year. If your phone is new enough, you can place it on a charging cradle and leave its display on to see it transform into a dynamic photo frame, a digital organizer, an alarm clock, a terminal for video calls , and what else… The same thing will be possible on iPhone this fall.
It will suddenly become a lot more pleasant to leave your telephone on your desk or on your bedside table than to hold it to your ear… Because even if we still speak today of a smart “telephone”, it seems that the function telephony of these pocket computers is less and less important.