What iOS 17's Live Voicemail Means for Your Public Mobile Experience

[J_PM]

Hi Community!

Just like clockwork, Apple rolls out a new iOS update every year packed with a variety of new features. This year is no exception, however, there's one particular feature that might change the way you experience voicemail on your mobile device. It's called Live Voicemail, and we're here to explain how this new function will interact with your Public Mobile services.

What is Live Voicemail?
Apple Live Voicemail allows real-time transcription as someone leaves a voicemail. It also gives you the option to pick up the call as the message is being left. This feature aims to aid you in identifying spam calls and deciding if you wish to take a call from someone you know.

Device support
These iPhones are compatible with iOS 17, and can support Apple Live Voicemail:

• iPhone XS / XS Max / XR
• iPhone 11 / 11 Pro / 11 Pro Max
• iPhone 12 / 12 mini / 12 Pro / 12 Pro Max
• iPhone 13 / 13 mini / 13 Pro / 13 Pro Max
• iPhone 14 / 14 Plus / 14 Pro / 14 Pro Max
• iPhone SE 2 / SE 3

How It Works
Live Voicemail only operates in Canada, when your phone is turned on and under network coverage. The device should have the language set to English, as French or other languages will not be supported at this time.

Impacts on Public Mobile Voicemail

• Greeting: A generic Apple Live Voicemail greeting will play for callers instead of your personalized Public Mobile voicemail greeting. 
• Transcription: Transcriptions will be in English. Any other language might result in garbled text.
• Block Option: A 'Block' button will appear as the message is being transcribed, and pressing it will block the caller. Block will appear only if the caller is not in your contact list.

Turning Off Live Voicemail

If you want to revert to your personalized Public Mobile voicemail greeting, you can turn off Live Voicemail by going to Settings > Phone > Live Voicemail and toggling it off.

Additional Info

• Live Voicemail won't work while roaming.
• It aims to aid with the growing issue of spam calls and helps in decision-making when you want or need to answer calls from known contacts.

We hope this helps clarify some questions regarding the new iOS update and the Apple Live Voicemail feature.

For any additional questions regarding Public Mobile Voicemail, check out this article. 

Best,

The Public Mobile Team

[golfball]

From what I can tell the custom greeting implementation is a holdover from Visual Voicemail and is designed to download the carrier greeting for use with Live Voicemail. Since there's no visual voicemail here the function does not work. In the future Apple should implement a way to customize your greeting on carriers that don't have VVM enabled, they could bypass the carriers if they really had to.

[Buck110]

Yeah on the voicemail tab there is only "edit" at the top right, and no "greeting" button on the top left. I suppose that means we can't make a personal greeting, which is pretty lame. I guess I have to weigh whether or not I want people to know it's actually me that they called.

For example, I literally had someone call today and leave a message asking if I could take a shift at the bookstore they work at, not knowing that the number they called was wrong. The Siri greeting doesn't say who you are at all, it just says "your message is being forwarded to voice mail" or something to that effect. Hard to believe that this is something Apple didn't take into account, it's surely intentionally omitted at a carrier's request so they can charge for that. 

[hTideGnow]

hi @Buck110 

this is for Telus with Visual VM, not sure us

For example, Telus subscribers in Canada can record a personal greeting for Live Voicemail if they have Visual Voicemail on their plan

[Nezgar]

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@Buck110 wrote:

will we ever be able to change the greeting to a personal greeting? Tested this and the greeting is just a generic Siri one 

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According, to this page, it looks like you can do it this way:

In the Phone app, select the Voicemail tab > Greeting > Ensure that 'Custom' is selected. You may then hit Play to hear a preview of the selected one.

On the other hand, this other page says that the option might not be available if the carrier doesn't allow. it. Do you see the option? I can't imagine a carrier would block this feature, I hope this isn't the case for Public Mobile...

To record a new custom greeting, go to the "Voicemail" tab in the Phone app and tap "Greeting" at the top. If you don't see "Greeting" there, your carrier does not support custom greetings for Live Voicemail.

[Buck110]

will we ever be able to change the greeting to a personal greeting? Tested this and the greeting is just a generic Siri one 

[computergeek541]

@Nezgar 

In the case.of the device amswerimg the call automatically, the point still remains that this would use up minutes for a few customers who are on spefific plans.

[Nezgar]

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@computergeek541 wrote:

To my knowledge features such as this work by forwarding the call to a diferent phone number (the number of the Apple Live Voicemail).  Depending on how Public Mobile counts the minutes for a forwarded call, this could potentially use minutes for customers not on unlimited calling plans.    In addition, the ability to answer the call while the messages is being recorded would require the use of an internet connection.

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I presume this isn't using forwarding at all, but probably is just handled by the phone actually just answering the call, and the phone is doing the live transcription itself. Public Mobile would then see it as an answered call like any other.

[LitlLdy]

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@Handy1 wrote:

Another win for iPhone 🙂

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It would be nice though if there was the option of using my own greeting with it 🙂

[Handy1]

Another win for iPhone 🙂

[BKNS27]

@J_PM 

Just downloaded iOS 17 on my iPhone 14 Pro Max and testing it out now.

Too bad the iOS 17 isn’t available on my iPhone 8 and X.

Works better than Bixby on my Samsung S9 and S22.

Thanks for the heads up!

[golfball]

Why can't we customize the greeting? You can on other carriers.

[dust2dust]

So this isn't a feature that PM is implementing then. If it's using forwarding then forwarding has to work on the phone and that got broken with the introduction of volte and then if you have volte you have to get support to fix forwarding.

It also just kind of seems like this place would rather be Public iPhone Mobile seeing as how the features we should all be able to use if our phones can ie. volte and 5G are being severely blocked even when the same phone can use features at other providers.

[DennyCrane]

So similar to what Google has had on their Pixel's for years (Call Screen), but linked to voicemail.

[computergeek541]

To my knowledge features such as this work by forwarding the call to a diferent phone number (the number of the Apple Live Voicemail).  Depending on how Public Mobile counts the minutes for a forwarded call, this could potentially use minutes for customers not on unlimited calling plans.    In addition, the ability to answer the call while the messages is being recorded would require the use of an internet connection.

[hTideGnow]

thanks for @J_PM clarifying and I am glad PM supports it too