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Comment by mef | Hacker News Reader

on iOS, the "Silence Unknown Callers" feature has completely eliminated this for me.

Canadian physician here: yeah, this is hell for us trying to reach patients through the hospital system, which is "unknown" by default. Straight to voicemail and you can't really leave a message. Totally agree though, this problem is very time consuming, if only for the time it takes me to look at my phone and decide not to answer the call - a few seconds of my life each time. My worst day was a few days ago; 7 calls.

You're going to hate me then: I go a step farther than OP: Do Not Disturb mode 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No notifications, no messages, no phone ring at all. I make sure my voicemail is never full. Leave a message and if it's important I will get back to you.

If I have a sick relative and explicitly expect an urgent call, I can easily and briefly turn off DND mode.

If the concept of a telephone never existed, and "Phone App" was invented today, it would be considered extremely intrusive and likely not (at least on iOS) pass App Store review. Think about it: Here's an app that allows any random person to cause your device to 1. interrupt whatever foreground app you have running with system-level UI (notification or full-screen takeover), and 2. ring and vibrate your device without your consent. If we weren't already familiar with telephones, we would never accept such an obnoxious app!

That is just the android facebook app in lite mode! I tried it for about 24 hours once after much social pressure. Now I just look at my wife's feed if she mentions something interesting.

In the US, I've had several problems with physician clerical staff calling me on their personal cellular phones instead of using an office line with proper ID set, then upset because they could never get hold of me. No, I don't answer calls from random strangers, and I don't do answering machines or voicemail, which seems to be something so radical some people have trouble understanding the concept.

Developer here, the cost is more than a few seconds. That call can derail productivity for much longer, like pushing a heavy stone that must gain momentum

Out of curiosity - what do you mean by "Can't really leave a message" ?

Not the OP, but if you are a doctor and need to ring a relative or a friend to inform them about a very sick patient, leaving a message without the opportunity for at least brief interaction isn't something particularly pleasant for either party. ( You either leave too nonspecific information that not being sure what to do, or too much that potentially is breaching patient confidentiality or is going to panic the recipient)

Ah that makes sense, thanks. I wasn't sure if there was something I didn't know about blocking unknown calls on iOS or Android that also prevented voicemails

I was actually waiting on a call back from a parcel company, so the scam caller in this case just had very lucky timing.

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