iOS 18 brings Live Voicemail with Transcription to India

nullpc

Disciple

Pleasant surprise when I went to check on a missed call, there was a voicemail notification and it transcribed the text also. Huuuuge relief given the increasing number of spam calls and scammers.

Tried asking a friend to leave something in Hindi but the transcript was bad. So I guess it has more ways to go for local languages. And also improvements to handle Indian accent better.

Also keep in mind I’m on first developer preview, so hopefully, things will get better by launch.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3015.png
    IMG_3015.png
    138.1 KB · Views: 80
I have been using it for a few months by changing language to English (US). I almost never pick up unknown callers now. Super useful
You mean region?
This is kind of big update, there are so many changes, biggest update in a very long time.
Yeap, many good QoL improvements across the board.

Everything’s not available in the developer preview however. iPhone Mirroring is what I’m looking forward to the most.

~

Today alone, this helped fend off 3 spam calls. Love it when the agent on the other end is confused. Just need to come up with a good voicemail message/voice.
 
Last edited:
Wasn't this feature available earlier too on Airtel? However, on Jio it wasn't available earlier. I updated to IOS 18 and now I see the live voicemail option. The default voicemail message sounds very robotic, would need to set a custom message.
 
Wasn't this feature available earlier too on Airtel? However, on Jio it wasn't available earlier. I updated to IOS 18 and now I see the live voicemail option. The default voicemail message sounds very robotic, would need to set a custom message.
I can’t recall voicemail ever being available in India via carriers. This is on-device and not carrier-based.
 
It’s available on Airtel, my spouse’s phone has it enabled for a while now, currently on IOS 17. Not sure if it’s a postpaid only feature. The transcription feature is also available and shows as Carrier Voicemail. However, I couldn’t enable it on Jio, it always said the feature isn’t available.

This new feature on IOS 18 as you said seems to be entirely on the phone without any carrier integration.
 
Wow, I thought this never made it to India! Is this free of cost for you or did you have to pay additional? How many voicemails are kept around?

This new feature on IOS 18 as you said seems to be entirely on the phone without any carrier integration.
That’s correct.
 
Yeah, I've seen it only on Airtel, called something as Visual Voicemail. There are no additional fees, and I am not even sure what carrier feature is being used, cause it looks like the whole thing is done on the phone anyway. Basically its the same as that on IOS 18 (atleast from an end user perspective) except that it needs carrier support to enable.
 
Yeah, I've seen it only on Airtel, called something as Visual Voicemail. There are no additional fees, and I am not even sure what carrier feature is being used, cause it looks like the whole thing is done on the phone anyway. Basically its the same as that on IOS 18 (atleast from an end user perspective) except that it needs carrier support to enable.
I remember setting my voicemail greeting on Airtel (and also Vodafone) 4-5 years ago. I suppose you couldn't call that visual in the sense that I would recieve a SMS message and then had to dial in to check the recording.

It then started populating the numbers a year or so ago so you could check the messages directly and I believe this is called as visual voicemail.

However, the live transcription is definitely an iOS 18 thing. It is amusing to see clueless telemarketers and bots wasting time now.
 
It is amusing to see clueless telemarketers and bots wasting time now.
+1.

#1 reason I enabled it as soon as it was made available. Significantly reduced time I spent picking up and dealing with scammers and marketers. It does stump genuine callers occasionally but I guess people will eventually get used to it. Huge QoL improvement!
 
This feature has saved me a ton of time as I can just let unknown numbers go to voicemail. Some clueless telemarketers still start reading off a script...speaking to a recording. At this point, I'm not sure if these people are even real :facepalm:
 
Back
Top