The smart assistants that our phones include can be much more useful than simply asking you questions, or asking you to turn off the lights in the room (as long as we have compatible bulbs). Assistants can even help us answer calls when we cannot answer them, as is the case with Bixby, the virtual assistant of the Samsung Galaxy.
Bixby can answer calls for us and transcribe them to show us on the screen what the person who called is saying. This can be very useful for when we are busy or, better yet, for spam calls. If it is a sales call that we do not want to attend, what better way to have a virtual assistant do it?
Have Samsung’s virtual assistant answer calls for you
Although smartphones have spam detection systems, sometimes commercial calls and other times can bypass those filters. In this case, if you see a call from an unknown number and you don’t want to answer it, you can leave the task to Bixby. The same if you are in a situation where you simply cannot answer the phone.
Activating and configuring this function on Samsung Galaxy phones is very easy, we just need to have One UI version 5.1 or higher installed on our phone. If we have this requirement, we follow the following steps:
- Let’s go to the application Phone on the mobile and press the three-dot button. Then, we select the option Settings
- Next we access “text call” (this option is sometimes called “Text Call with Bixby”)
- Finally, we activate the text call function
From now on, we have already activated the possibility of Bixby receiving calls for us, but we can also do some important adjustments to configure this function.
- On the same screen we can click on “Voice” and select whether we want to use a female voice (Voice 1) or a male voice (Voice 2). We can also choose the speed at which Bixby speaks when receiving the call, or leave the default settings.
- On the Text Call screen we can press on “Quickly answers” and add personalized responses that we want Bixby to say, which we can choose during the call.
- Finally, if we wish we can change the language.
The way Bixby calls work is very simple: when you receive a call, a third button will appear on the screen next to the buttons to answer the call and to reject it. By pressing this button, text call, we will start the transcription through Bixby.
The caller will hear the voice we have chosen for the assistant, and we can select the messages that Bixby will say in the call, while we read the transcript on the screen. It is really useful, and its operation is quite good, although it is not perfect, especially if the personalized messages that we configure are too long or complex.
Cover photo | Alejandro Alcolea for Xataka