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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

In many Android phones you can't record calls and call recording apps don't work.

When I recently reported a crime police didn't show up and when I asked them to come for a follow up, they lied that I have not asked anyone to come. The lovely lady even said "We listened to your call and you didn't ask us to come when incident happened."

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Google just broke call recording again on my Pixel 4 with their latest Android update. They've done this multiple times in the last few years. Truly deplorable..

The reason is mostly technical. Depending on the phone, call audio isn't implemented as much in software as wired directly (in some variable degree) to the radio hardware.

This is why the quality and success rate of call recording apps varies - it depends how many kinds of configurations the app authors managed to implement support / workarounds for.

As some who tinkers phones, this is very true, especially with phones equipped with Qualcomm chipsets (note that VoLTE and VoWiFi are decoded in software though).

Bullshit. They break it with updates on phones where it worked just fine. They also removed access to root folders on a whim. This sucked for those of us with locked bootloaders, without root we now lost access to those folders and the contents therein.

What is you country (of your SIM card)? If it's Asia, I'm definitely sure that circumventing that restriction (even analog means) will get you to jail.

Edit: also some parts of the US!

Sadly, the HN can't handle valid concerns.

> They also removed access to root folders on a whim.

I don't know what you mean by this exactly, but from the manufacturer's view, any method of allowing the modification of the operating system software is a vulnerability (because the same could be done to e.g. install rootkits). This is why many devices allow unlocking the bootloader (as the official way to modify the OS) but announce this loudly on boot.

No, I am sure it is intentional. I have call recording working on my phone, but I know for a fact the pending software update I have disables that functionality.

The success rate varies, because of the cat and mouse game with manufacturers.

Is that so? I can make phone calls with my iPhone on wireless Bluetooth headphones. Does the radio hardware directly stream to whatever headphones my iPhone is paired with? I suppose it’s possible, but it strikes me as unlikely.

Judging from that call recording apps apparently need to implement support for recording calls over Bluetooth separately, I would conclude that this does go over a different path, but still needs to be handled explicitly.

Is there any android app you would recommend for call recording?

Is there any app on playstore / apk out there that reliably fulfills the job for both phone and VoIP calls?

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