Sometimes you have to acknowledge a good idea, even if it’s from one of your competitors.
This is the core point in an excellent article written by TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez, in which she points out that Google’s new Pixel 3 flagship Android smartphone is the first to introduce a new call screening feature that leverages the built-in Google Assistant. The screening service transcribes the caller’s request in real-time, allowing you to decide whether or not to pick up, and offers a way to respond.
The updated Call Screen feature came as a surprise during the company’s hardware event yesterday, even if the new Duplex and Group Selfie features managed to wrangle a fair amount of attention away from Call Screen.
At present, Apple has nothing like this call screening feature and only third-party call blocking apps offer this functionality.
Perez also notes that Siri, Apple’s assistant application, isn’t presently up to snuff in terms of answering the phone, politely asking the caller what they want, and transcribing their response instantly, which is a benchmark Google’s Assistant seems to have reached.
This also dovetails with the fact that roughly half of all calls will be spam in 2019, emanating from scammers, who have an ever-increasing array of tactics at hand in the coming months and years ahead.
The article’s a good read, and even if it does point out some of Apple’s and Siri’s shortcomings and has Apple eat a bit of crown, it makes some extremely valid points as to what the folks at Apple Park need to work on.
Mobile technologies, especially between iOS and Android, have always been akin to an arms race and where Google has raised the bar, Apple can now realize the areas it needs to improve upon to win the market in the years to come.
And that’s never a bad thing.
Via TechCrunch