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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Phone calls should have a subject line, just like emails.

It’s crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on my personal device with no context. If call metadata included a subject line, software could automatically screen out calls where the subject is empty or spammy, just like with email.

It would be very helpful for missed calls. “Why did my wife call twice in the last 5 minutes, did something happen, should I panic?!” It also removes the need to leave rambling voicemail.

The subject line takes only 15 seconds to write but will significantly reduce receiver anxiety, both synchronously and asynchronously. Sending a text after the call is not the same because it’s not in context.

I remember proposing this to WhatsApp while I was working at FB but the WhatsApp culture seemed uninterested in feature ideas of any kind. Hopefully someone else does it eventually.

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> It’s crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on my personal device with no context.

It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function. If you don't want that, wouldn't a pad be a better option than a phone?

Besides, how would you handle calls from landlines and such?

>It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function.

No, it's not. You sound like a dinosaur. A phone's primary functions are 1) text-messaging apps, 2) camera, 3) dating apps, 4) banking apps, and various others. Phone calls are somewhere around #20.

The way I like to look at it is: Imagine a world where the concept of a phone call never existed. Then, suddenly someone invents an app that:

1. Allows an instant, full-screen foreground takeover over whatever else you are currently doing on the device

2. Rings and vibrates your device

3. Has a button that could allow an unknown person to send and receive audio to and from your device

4. All of this is triggered remotely, from anyone in the world, without any kind of user identification or authentication, besides a spoofable number

No app store's rules in either major ecosystem would allow such an abusive app. Yet, only because the legacy concept of a "phone call" exists, not only is the app allowed, but it's preloaded on every device out there!

It's a pocket computer.

The phone feature is a legacy feature that goes away with 2G. Soon carriers will only be moving data.

The providers have data to show that the phone functionality is not a primary use case. It is a legacy product whose overhead has a real cost on our economy.

When do we stop paying $10-$20 a month per lines of service, for the privileging of being interrupted? When do we stop calling it a smartphone and treating as such and recognizing it as as computer, a laptop for your pocket.

I expect those born in the last century to be most resistant to the deprecation of the 'phone call' as a concept. People also reminisced about having phone lines that were partied together. Imagine what scammers would do with that today.

I doubt people from the last century are the ones holding on to the idea of a phone call.

Whatever telcos are doing these days would have led to jail time in the 1990s.

I would like to see a return to the government passing QOS laws for safety critical services, then enforcing them.

Since everyone is dunking on twitter these days: How is it legal for them to slap an auth wall on top of emergency response agencies' feeds? If I MITM'ed the emergency broadcast system with such bullshit, I'd go to jail. Twitter is used during emergencies by at least 100x more people than emergency broadcast.

Unfortunately it kind of fails at being a good pocket computer (all else aside they got rid of the concept of files and replaced it with nothing). The fact that it fails at being a phone too is just adding insult to injury.

If things were different, things would be different, certainly. But things are not different, so things are not different.

I assume you are using android or some ancient version of iOS.

Currently on iOS, #1 is not done by any app including the phone, and #2-#4 are in fact allowed by App Store apps.

Not according to the mobile OS engineering teams at Apple or Google. Phone calls are intentionally given priority over other functions.

> Not according to the mobile OS engineering teams at Apple

Phone calls haven't forced full screen takeovers for several years on iOS, and have the same UX as 3rd party VoIP and Video call apps...

Priority isn't solely limited to forced full screen takeovers.

dating apps over phone calls is an absolutely ludicrous take that demonstrates a disconnect from reality

Definitely not. It depends on who you and your circle of friends are, of course, but dating apps are definitely way higher usage than phone calls among anyone I know. I use my phone as a phone less than half a dozen times per year. If the phone functionality vanished, I don't think I would mind.

the disconnect is that you're not able to see outside your bubble. Your average iphone or android user is using the phone function far more than dating apps

How do we know who is in a bubble? :) When I walk around downtown, I see hundreds of people on their phones, and maybe one or two of them is actually using it as a phone. Obviously I don't know if they're on dating apps specifically, but they are enormously popular, so it seems plausible.

A quick google search will show you that you could not be further from the truth :)

No, they're not. In the country I'm living in, *no one* uses phone calls except for rare things like delivery people calling because the box doesn't fit in your apartment's delivery boxes. Absolutely no one under the age of 50 uses voice calling to talk to their friends or family; they all use LINE texting.

I haven't taken a phone call in over a month now (from the Amazon delivery guy). I use dating and texting apps every day. For actual talking to friends/family, I use voice and video chat functions in chat apps.

You only do voice calls six times in a year?

Something on that order, yeah. Looking through my phone's call log, I had a call with a friend in mid-August, and another with another friend in mid-July. Prior to that was a call with my mom in April and that's as far back as the log goes.

You sound like you’re disconnected from reality.

Phone = Telephone: The term telephone was adopted into the vocabulary of many languages. It is derived from the Greek: τῆλε, tēle, "far" and φωνή, phōnē, "voice", together meaning "distant voice".

Distant voice communication is the entire purpose for a phone.

Just because you want or expect your phone to do more, doesn’t make your desires the primary function of the device.

And geometry is from the Greek γῆ (gê) 'earth, land', and μέτρον (métron) 'a measure', referring to it's original use as a tool for surveying farm plots in flood plains. It's obviously expanded much past that original definition to the point now that the original definition is simply one small application of the tool. In fact an application that the vast majority of practitioners will never administer.

Names change much slower the function generally.

The save button icon is also a floppy disk.

Is there a 5-6 inch pad available? If not, then that's not an alternative, can't shove a 10 inch tablet into my pocket. And while it's called a phone, the primary function for many (dare I say most?) is definitely not doing voice calls, hell my phone app icon isn't even on the homescreen anymore, that's how little I use this device for phone calls and I use it for hours every day otherwise.

Samsung Note series of phones. I've been using them since the Note 3 and could not imagine using any other device without a stylus.

Yes, it's primarily a phone by market segmentation. But it's a small tablet by features.

> Is there a 5-6 inch pad available?

Android tablets? Several.

I'd be interest to know what those are. Smallest I've been able to find is 8 inches.

Hmm, I was going to get back to you with a list, but it seems most of the 6-inchers have been discontinued. The Amazon Fire 6 would have been the most prominent example.

There are some, but none of them would be suitable for consumer use.

I stand corrected!

>Besides, how would you handle calls from landlines and such?

Direct to voicemail, of course, with a message saying 'text me' for automatic transcription. As they say, its a feature not a bug [to not be interrupted]. In a perfect world I'd have a secretary or AI to screen calls on my behalf, but I don't.

Ironically, you almost do. Last week I updated my S22 to Android 13, and one of the new features Samsung claims to have implemented[0] is to have Bixby pick the call for you, transcribe what the caller says, and display it on screen, giving you a choice to pick up the call, or type/select a reply that Bixby will then say to the caller. With spam call detection being an established feature for years already, the ingredients for your AI assistant are already there.

Now that I think of it, I might actually try this the next time a telemarketer calls.

----

[0] - I haven't actually tested it, nor seen it in action - just saw it being mentioned when I reviewed "Tips" app after update.

Pixel phones have call screen feature today, and anecdotally it works great. I haven't picked up to a telemarketer in over a year.

https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9118387?hl=en

Thankfully you’re not charge of designing my phone

As a phone, all cell phones are terrible. In the wired-phone era companies used to advertise on call quality. Nobody does that any more because the quality of cell phone calls is so abysmal that text with (or without frankly) emojis is an order of magnitude better for communication.

If they made pads the size of my phone that could still use cell network internet and that I could put a custom OS on I'd consider it.

People who never experienced a really good connection when no more than a little of the phone & switching network was digitized, surely have no idea what they're missing. I've never once heard a call since that era that was as good—VOIP, Zoom, cell network, modern POTS network, whatever.

t's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function.

Not for about fifteen years or so, no. I don't even have the Phone app on the front page of my iPhone, let alone allow it to sit in the dock. Regardless, whatever the primary function of the device, there is room for improvement over "it's always worked that way".

tbf, it depends. I make/receive around 1 call per month, if that.

To me, it's a good quality camera that I can fit in my pocket.

> It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function.

So? This is a way to improve phone calls.

> If you don't want that, wouldn't a pad be a better option than a phone?

1) Do they make devices that aren't phones that are the size of a note"pad"? The smallest non-phone tablet devices are now (with the death of iPod touch) the size of (at best) a small note"book", not a sensibly-sized-for-portable-usage note"pad".

2) That doesn't even solve the problem as tons of Internet-connected messaging software now supports calls, so I feel like you are missing the point in some sense: the person you are responding to is seriously talking about WhatsApp!

Hah, no it's not, I don't even have the phone app on my home screen unless I search for it.

“Receiver anxiety” should crawl off into the forest. It’s a youth-millennial thing that inhibits waaaay too much authentic social action. People are just too scared to be human. Just call me! I might pick up I might not.

For that matter, if I don’t respond to your email in a day, treat it like a phone call and just try again. Don’t assume I’m ignoring you. It’s just e-mail.

My mother had no issues calling someone but her parents were upset when she started listening to that damn rock and roll. The youth thing inhibits way too much authentic music. People are just scared to listen to the oldies. /s

Différent generations have different norms and it’s not right or wrong.

>Différent generations have different norms

Yes.

> and it’s not right or wrong.

No.

This sort of relativism of all norms, mores, morals, and ethics needs to stop. There are some cultural and social norms/mores that are better than others. We know this, because empirically some produce better outcomes than others. Mass-scale social anxiety at having to interact with another human being is NOT healthy for society, and is likely the underlying cause for a significant amount of the current social ills that are either new or increasing over time.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess 17 year olds who can’t call people aren’t the reason for societies problems. Certainly less to blame than the 45yo’s who bemoan them.

Every generation thought that society was collapsing. Despite that, time progresses, people age out of the population and a new generation is born. And society (mostly) doesn’t collapse.

Those 17 year olds grow up into adults with the same unaddressed anxieties.

When I was 17 I spent like an hour emailing a teacher telling her I’d be late on an assignment by a day. Because I was very anxious about writing an email to a “superior” and didn’t know how it’d go, or what the “right” email looked like.

Now I email hundreds of times a day, and have constantly shifted deadlines to no professional detriment. I still get nervous emailing a new important person, but you do it anyways.

Do people really forget what it’s like being young? Sometimes you just grow up and move on.

While I didn’t understand the analogy, I will happily admit that, yes, I’m making the case that some norms are better and some are worse.

a few generations ago, there was a moral panic that the kids weren’t all right because rock and roll music was corrupting. It was loud, vulgar, etc and therefore wrong.

My point was to emphasize how across generations, everyone seems to think that the youth have bad norms and it’s somehow wrong, and then they grow up and the world keeps spinning, and the cycle repeats.

It’s awfully vain to think that the norms of your generation in your nation at your point in time are magically the ”better” ones.

The parent comment reference a novel idea that phone calls could have a subject line. It’s novel, it’s clever, it would solve many problems beyond just “people are scared to be human”. The world moves on, and we can improve it or we can launch ad hominem attacks on the next generation.

> if I don’t respond to your email in a day, treat it like a phone call and just try again. Don’t assume I’m ignoring you.

I mean... aren't you ignoring them? It's an email. Where'd the first one go that the second one is going to be any different?

I read your email, got interrupted, and did not reply. Then I forgot about it.

If you email me again, it might get read at a more convenient time, and I'll answer.

Same reason I might not answer your call: I'm busy with something else or not near my phone at the moment. This used to be normal by the way -- if I called your home phone and nobody answered, I'd have no choice but to call again later.

I miss a very high percentage of legitimate email messages from people because I don't receive many of them (half a dozen per year?) and get like 20-30 spam and mistyped-address emails per day (that's after the spam filters), so I don't pay much attention to it unless I'm expecting something.

Humans I know contact me through whatsapp. Or if they're old (and hell, I'm almost 40, so I mean old) through text or phone. Strangers' only real hope is text. I'll probably miss anything else. And even that is getting so goddamn spammy now that it's not far from being like email: only useful if I'm already expecting a message. I receive stupid political ads for states I've never lived in a couple times a day.

It isn’t visually present in the list of 50-100 emails in my inbox. Mail again and remind. It’s not rude. It’s rude to assume the other person is ignoring.

also it's very easy to curate a public image of beeing busy if you complain about interruptions because everybody can relate to the feeling.

I don't have a problem with phone calls but if someone unexpected engages with me on the street or in a hallway I kind of freeze for long enough that we have walked past each other and then realize that was a bit rude but its too late now.

I like the idea, but it will never take off. People are fundamentally lazy when it comes to these things. Look at the surging popularity of voice messages in some circles, shifting the burden of communication fully to the receiver. Even if you had the feature, I'd wager most subject lines would stay empty, or just contain the bare minimum like "hi".

That’s ok. Metadata improves context but isn’t mandatory. Some people want it, others don’t bother.

It’s like sending a calendar invite. Sure, you can send an invite with nothing but your email address and a date+time. But many people would find an empty invite a bit rude. It’s just polite to include some context about the meeting. The phone call should evolve in that direction.

If it's not mandatory, then what's the point? You can already send text messages if the message is important. And since it's optional, both spammers and your lazy family will leave it blank making it useless to filter out spam.

It doesn't have to be a burden. My watch already provides me a quick-select list of responses. So when I make a call, instead of one generic send button, how about two? One of them labeled "this is a emergency" or something like that. Maybe even a little list of a half dozen of the most commonly used subjects, so I just click the one that matches.

No reason to make people work any harder than they do now.

But if other people are lazy, why would I entertain interruptions from them? I generally don’t do any work voice or video calls because, simply, they are an interruption. So they need to have an agenda and be scheduled. And indeed, I do not listen to voice messages; type it out or don’t send it at all.

> Phone calls should have a subject line, just like emails.

Yeah, I think it's called IM.

> It’s crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on my personal device with no context.

That's called DND, my phone is 100% time in DND mode. There are already filters for spam calls based on phone number.

> It would be very helpful for missed calls. “Why did my wife call twice in the last 5 minutes, did something happen, should I panic?!”

Maybe tell wife to write you IM/SMS or just communicate through IM as priority, if you desire text communication?

> Maybe tell wife to write you IM/SMS or just communicate through IM as priority, if you desire text communication?

Not the parent, but Dog knows I have been trying. Some people just don’t understand how disruptive an unnecessary phone call is.

Phone calls from unknown numbers go straight to voice mail. Same for some people who think it’s fair game to call me and bore my ears off with their life whilst I am working.

Problem solved.

This is a solution very dependent on individual preferences, though, it is not any kind of blanket solution.

I once called my brother from a phone that was not mine, in the middle of the night, to inform him that our brother had died suddenly. He did not answer. He got that message in the morning when he checked his voicemail after waking up. He was very upset at the delay.

Filtering from unknown numbers is a hack, and it has consequences. We should not have to do it just to get some peace from our phones.

> I once called my brother from a phone that was not mine, in the middle of the night, to inform him that our brother had died suddenly. He did not answer. He got that message in the morning when he checked his voicemail after waking up. He was very upset at the delay.

Well, sometimes shit happen. I can think of a handful of scenarios where I cannot be contacted and it’s right that sometimes it could be important. But I am not living on alert 24/7 because sometimes someone might die. My filtering system lets the second call through, which I think works fine as most spammers do not call twice within one minute. That said, in the middle of the night I still probably would not hear, but not because of that.

(I am sure that the situation was complex and difficult to manage enough for you to have to borrow a phone, and I do not envy you for having gone through it and am sorry you had to. In that situation I would be very upset regardless of the delay).

> Filtering from unknown numbers is a hack, and it has consequences. We should not have to do it just to get some peace from our phones.

That’s entirely right and I agree completely. But then we are where we are and the world often disagrees with me. Otherwise I could also get rid of my ads and trackers blockers.

How is it solved for someone who has to have phone calls? Since when saying "it's not a problem for me" solved any problems?

If you are being paid to answer your phone, then answer your phone. I’m not, so I don’t.

Or if you're waiting for a call from _____

Then I add an exception for ______. If they cannot tell you their number (happens with some companies), then they can:

- arrange a call, which is great because then I am guaranteed to have the time to deal with the topic, I do that sometimes with my bank;

- leave a voice mail, which is not great but then I am not responsible for their phone number policy (nobody leaves voice mail anymore);

- send an email (or a SMS, a WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Skype, whatever, I am not picky), possibly to arrange a phone call, also great because I can answer written messages on my own terms and not when they feel like calling me;

- (most of the time these days) have a chat over whatever IM platform they integrated into their website.

My time is not theirs to use however they want. If they want me to be on call, that’s fine, but with compensation.

Exactly!

I think the problem there is that a lot of people just won't bother. Some people would just put "pick up" on that subject line, or leave it empty (surely you wouldn't make it mandatory, nobody would accept that), or any number of things.

I personally hate unscheduled calls, and I'd love it if everyone sent a text first to check if you're free for a call, and only call after you've accepted, but... that's just never gonna happen.

"It would be very helpful for missed calls. “Why did my wife call twice in the last 5 minutes, did something happen, should I panic?!” It also removes the need to leave rambling voicemail."

Well, what is stopping your wife from also texting you, if it was something important and she did not reach you? And what would force her, to use a potential subject line?

Otherwise it is an interesting idea, but I doubt it will be a killer feature, as most would simply ignore it.

I used to have a phone with DND but if the same caller tried twice in a couple of minutes then it would ring.

I guess this explains why spam calls to my home phone do an immediate retry.

Is this through Tasker or something? I would love to have this feature.

default android feature as well [0]

[0]: https://support.google.com/android/answer/9069335?hl=en#zipp...

default iphone feature

> Well, what is stopping your wife from also texting you,

LOL. She does. "Call me"

Very helpful.

> Phone calls should have a subject line, just like emails.

Pixel phones have call screening feature. It can be enabled for all calls or unknown callers. It asks the caller to state the reason they are calling and notifies you with the text of the reason given and you can choose whether to accept or reject.

If you want something more then you could just ask callers to text you instead.

> It’s crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on my personal device with no context

Is this 2018? C'mon - phone calls don't actually do full screen takeovers on your device anymore, do they?

I like where you're going with this, and particularly with the increase of video calls, it's still strange to just pick up and see a person.

The flow I get people into is to communicate via text (slack, whatsapp, etc depending on the nature of the environment) with a "hey, is now a good time to call", or "I wanted to discuss XYZ", and we can then hash out the best method for communication.

The authors complaint is valid, but I think it is more of a UX issue, similar to what you're suggesting here.

Great handle BTW

This feature would be super useful, since nobody I would ever willingly talk to would use it I could dump all calls with subjects to voicemail (and then not check it).

I've changed the settings on my iPhone so that calls are shown like notifications like everything else. So no more taking over the whole screen.

Not sure what kind of phone you have, but my iPhone doesn’t take over the whole screen (unless locked). I have it set to only show a notification.

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