I remember a time when my cell phone carrier not only charged me for every minute I spent on the phone, but also charged me a nickel for every text message I sent. Fortunately, those days are long gone, but that doesn’t mean operators aren’t still trying to squeeze extra money out of you for small features each month.
Visual Voicemail is a great example of this, and it typically costs between $3 and $5 per line, per month, to enjoy what seems like a pretty standard feature. If you have a family plan, this feature could cost you between $30 and $40. per monthbut if you use Samsung Galaxy phones, you might be able to save that money and let your phone do all the work.
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What is direct voicemail?
With Direct Voicemail, your phone always will answer incoming calls, but will use Galaxy AI to answer and transcribe the call in real time. Galaxy AI answers the phone with an automated voice that tells the caller that you are unavailable and then displays the transcribed call on your screen. You can also answer the call at any time during the process, giving it a distinct advantage over traditional voicemail.
Since the call and all transcription is done on your phone, you never have to go to your provider’s voicemail system. Transcripts are also stored and processed only locally, so the call goes to your phone and stays on your phone. Samsung also offers AI-powered background noise removal through Direct Voicemail, helping your voice messages sound clearer than you’re used to.
What are the disadvantages of direct voicemail?
While Direct Voicemail is a better version of your provider’s visual voicemail service in many ways, it has more limitations since it requires your phone to answer the call. If your phone is turned off or has no network connection, for example, the call will still go to your provider’s voicemail system.
Direct voicemail does not work while you are on another call, as it has to answer the call to work. Video calls are also not supported and there may be restrictions on direct voicemail while traveling to other countries. You’ll also need to take your phone’s storage space into account, although transcripts barely take up any space, so this last point isn’t a problem most people will encounter.
How to enable Samsung direct voicemail
Direct voicemail is easy to set up, but many people may not know where to find the option. You can always look for it in system settings, which is usually the best way to find anything whose location you don’t know, but this is a faster way to access it:
1. Open the phone app.
2. Touch the three point menu at the top right and then tap Settings.
3. Select direct voicemail from the list.
4. Touch the toggle switch to turn it on.
Now that the feature is enabled, you’ll want to make sure all the settings are correct so you can get the most out of it. By default, automatic transcription is not enabled, so Direct Voicemail will still work but will not give you a real-time transcription while the person is speaking. To me, that’s a key component of the feature and makes it much less useful without it. Here’s how to enable it:
1. Open the phone app.
2. Touch the three point menu at the top right and then tap Settings.
3. Select direct voicemail from the list.
4. Scroll down and tap transcription assistant.
5. In the Call Recordings section of the next screen, turn on Automatic transcription of recorded calls and direct voicemail.
How to use direct voicemail
By default, Direct Voicemail will automatically send calls to voicemail after ringing for 20 seconds. You can adjust that time to whatever you want in your Direct Voicemail settings (accessed in the steps above), or you can manually send a call to Direct Voicemail at any time. Here’s how to do it.
1. When a call comes in, touch the More options on the dialer or pop-up call notification.
2. Select direct voicemail from the list to send the call to voicemail.
3. As the person speaks, they will see a live transcription appear on the screen.
4. To answer the call and interrupt direct voicemail, touch the Answer button.
How to find your direct voice messages
When someone leaves a direct voicemail, you can usually tap the notification to open it, but there are many times when I accidentally delete notifications and imagine other people do the same too. Fortunately, Direct Voicemail is built into the Phone app, making it easy to find your voicemails.
Additionally, you can clean up background noise in voicemails if the written transcript is difficult to understand or if there is simply a lot of background noise in the voicemail. Here’s a quick tutorial:
1. Open the phone app.
2. Touch the recent button in the bottom navigation bar.
3. Any recent call with a transcript will have a View recording and transcription button. Play that.
4. You can read your transcript here or use the audio controls to listen to it.
5. Touch the Galaxy AI Button at the bottom right to clean up the voicemail audio and remove background noise.
6. When you are finished with voicemail, tap the three point menu at the top right and then tap Delete transcript.
You’ve now mastered direct voicemail and can save some money on your future phone bills by using it instead of your provider’s visual voicemail system. Direct voicemail can’t work if your phone is disconnected for some reason, in which case it will route the voicemail to your carrier’s standard voicemail system, but you’re unlikely to have this problem most of the time.
Even with that limitation, I would personally go the direct voicemail route just to save money every month. Visual voicemail is cool and all, but if I can get the feature for free most of the time, you better believe that’s the route I’m going to take!
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