Google is now rolling out a very interesting new feature to Phone by Google , the so-called ‘Expressive Calling’ feature . Well, it is rolling out to the beta channel as we speak, but still, it’s worth talking about, as it’s coming to everyone… soon.
‘Expressive Calling’ can flag calls as urgent when needed, it’s part of the Phone by Google app
So, what exactly is ‘Expressive Calling’? It lets callers flag some calls more important than others . It allows you to flag calls as urgent when needed, so that the person who’s receiving the call knows it.
How does it work? When you make a call, the app will ask you whether the call is urgent. The person on the other end will see an “It’s urgent!” message next ot the red siren emoji.
Now, depending on the phone you’re calling, it may even break the DND setting, or appear quietly in the notification shade and be marked as important. If you miss that call, it will also be marked in your call log differently from other calls.
This basically means that you won’t even have to whitelist contacts anymore, for when you’re in DND mode. Well, at least on some phones.
Misuse of this feature remains a worry
Some of you are probably worried about people misusing this feature to bother you. Well, that’s what came into our mind as well, as this has great potential of being misused. Well, that’s why Google is still testing the feature
As already mentioned, this feature is in beta at the moment. Only if you signed up for beta releases of the app will you be able to use this feature. If you are running a beta version of the app , you’ll need to go to Phone Settings -> General -> Expressive Calling in order to activate it.
It remains to be seen when or if Google will push the feature to the stable channel. The misuse of it remains a worry, so we’ll see what happens with that.
