Google’s Pixel phones offer several helpful features, but the one that keeps me coming back is Call Screen. If you haven’t used Call Screen, it lets the Google Assistant answer calls and screen them, making it a great way to deal with unknown numbers or spam calls.
A new update rolling out now for the Pixel Phone app brings some small but needed changes for Call Screen that consolidates the various settings and capabilities under one menu, though Canadians might not benefit much from it.
According to Android Police, the new Call Screen menu offers a ‘Protection Level’ menu with three options for how Call Screen will handle various incoming calls. ‘Basic’ protection will have Pixel phones decline known spam calls, ‘Medium’ protection will decline spam and screen suspicious calls, while ‘Maximum’ protection will screen all unknown numbers.
New Pixel Call Screen menu with Protection Level | Image credit: Android Police
On the one hand, the new menu offers less granular control than before, but it also significantly simplifies Call Screen, allowing users to pick one option that works for them rather than managing individual settings for each type of call.
Unfortunately, there are a few caveats. First, for Canadians, the change seems connected to Call Screen’s ability to automatically intercept calls, which isn’t available in Canada. Automatic Call Screen launched back in 2019 in the U.S. but hasn’t made its way north of the border. Canadians can still manually screen incoming calls, however.
The other caveat is the new Call Screen menu doesn’t appear to be widely available yet. Android Police notes that Phone app version 106.0.534575879 includes the new menu, but it has only found one report on Reddit of someone with the new menu. For what it’s worth, I’m also on that version of the Phone app, but I don’t see the menu (not that I would since I’m in Canada).
Source: Android Police
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