Phones aren’t really used for their original purpose anymore: Making actual phone calls. In fact, most of us don’t even want to deal with listening to missed voicemail—and Apple’s reportedly working on a fix for that, too.
According to Business Insider, Siri may soon be able to transcribe your voicemail for you. And if you give her permission, she could even tell callers where you are and why you can’t answer. This new feature is reportedly called iCloud Voicemail, with Siri essentially taking the place of your conventional voicemail. It seems likely that Apple will handle voicemail transcription much like it currently handles voice translation, sending information to Apple and then transcribing back to you—possibly through iMessage.
Like many of Apple’s recent new features, voicemail transcription isn’t anything new. Google already does something similar through Google Voice and other carriers, like T-Mobile, offer a similar service. Last month, Google even improved how well Google Voice can transcribe with a nice 49 percent accuracy boost, so some big companies seem pretty focused on making sure you never have to listen to another voicemail again.
The official slate of new iOS 9 features is pretty much set for next month’s launch, where Siri is due to get an overhaul to look more like Siri on the Apple Watch, as well as all-new Proactive features much like Google Now. So we most likely won’t see this new voicemail service until next year with iOS 10 and the iPhone 7. You’ll just have to listen to all those voicemails from your parents for one year longer.
[Business Insider via Engadget]