Google’s Phone App May Soon Offer Automatic Spam Call Screening

Thanks to the power of technology, many times when you receive a spam call on your smartphone, it’s labeled as such on your device when ringing. Instead of wasting your time in answering the call, you can simply decline it. However, according to code dug up in the latest beta for the official phone/dialer app from Google, the app and its Call Screen feature may soon offer automatic call screening of potential spam and robocalls.

Strings of code hint at the following: Automatic call screening, saving screened call audio for later playback, and spam preferences that would allow users to tweak what kinds of numbers the automatic call screen feature would work on.

This development is ideal because right now, with certain Android devices, you have three options when you have a spam or robocall incoming — you can either screen it with Google Assistant, decline it, or answer it. However, once this automated system rolls out, Assistant and the dialer app is going to automatically take care of spam for you. This sounds lovely because if I already have a number listed as spam that’s incoming, why spend my time screening it and reading out a transcript? That’s a waste of time.

Hurry up and roll this out, Google.

// XDA