I remember my cell phone carrier charging me not only for every minute I was on the phone, but for every text message I sent! Thankfully, those days are long gone, but that doesn’t mean carriers aren’t still trying to squeeze extra money out of you every month for little features.
Visual Voicemail is a great example of this, and it usually costs between $3 and $5 per line per month to enjoy what seems like a fairly standard feature. If you’re rocking a family plan, this feature could cost you $30-$40 per monthbut if you use Samsung Galaxy phones, you can save that money and let your phone do all the work instead.
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What is Direct Voicemail?
You will have a phone with Direct Voicemail always answers incoming calls, but will use Galaxy AI to field and transcribe the call in real time. Galaxy AI answers the phone with an automatic voice that lets the caller know you’re unavailable, then displays the transcribed call on your screen. You can also answer the call at any time during the process, giving it a distinct advantage over traditional voicemail.
Because the call and all transcription happens on your phone, it never has to go to your carrier’s voicemail system. Transcripts are also only stored and processed locally, so the call goes to your phone and stays on your phone. Samsung also offers AI-powered background noise cancellation through Voicemail Direct, which helps your voice messages sound clearer than you’re used to.
What are the disadvantages of direct voice mail?
While Direct Voicemail is in many ways a better version of your carrier’s visual voicemail service, it has more limitations because it requires your phone to answer the call. If your phone is turned off or you don’t have a network connection, for example, the call will still go to your carrier’s voicemail system.
Direct Voicemail doesn’t work when you’re on another call because it needs to answer the call to work. Video calls are also not supported, and Voicemail Direct may have limitations when traveling to other countries. While transcriptions take up almost no space, you also need to be mindful of storage space on your phone, so this last point isn’t an issue most people will encounter.
How to activate Samsung Direct Voicemail
Setting up Direct Voicemail is simple, but many people don’t know where to find the option. You can always just look for it in system settings, which is usually the best way to find anything you don’t know the location of, but here’s a faster way to get to it:
1. open Phone app.
2. hit three point menu in the upper right, then tap Parameters.
3. choose Direct Voicemail from the list.
4. tap the toggle switch turn it on.
Now that the feature is enabled, you’ll want to make sure all the settings are correct so you can get the most out of it. By default, automatic transcription is not enabled, so Voicemail Direct will still work, but it won’t give you a real-time transcript as the person speaks. To me, this is a key component of the feature and makes it less useful without it. How to activate it:
1. open Phone app.
2. hit three point menu in the upper right, then tap Parameters.
3. choose Direct Voicemail from the list.
4. Scroll down and tap Transcript Assistant.
5. On the next screen, turn on the Call Logs section Automatically transcribe recorded calls and Direct Voicemail.
How to use Direct Voicemail
By default, Direct Voicemail will automatically send calls to voicemail after 20 seconds of ringing. You can adjust that time to whatever you want in the Direct Voicemail settings (accessed in the steps above), or you can manually send a call directly to Voicemail at any time. How to do it.
1. When a call comes in, tap it More options press the button on the dialer or pop-up call notification.
2. choose Direct Voicemail from the list to send the call to voicemail.
3. As the man speaks, you a live transcript appears on the screen.
4. Tap to answer the call and hang up on Direct Voicemail Answer button.
How to find your Direct Voicemails
When someone leaves a Direct Voice Message, you can usually just tap the notification to open it, but there are plenty of times when I accidentally delete notifications and imagine other people doing the same. Thankfully, Direct Voicemail is built into the Phone app, making it easy to find your voicemails.
Additionally, if the written transcript is difficult to understand or the voicemail has a lot of background noise, you can remove background noise from voicemails. Here’s a quick tutorial:
1. open Phone app.
2. hit Ends button in the bottom navigation bar.
3. Any recent calls with transcription will have a See record and transcript button. Touch it.
4. You can read your transcription here or use the audio controls to listen to it.
5. hit Galaxy AI button in the lower right to clear voicemail and remove background noise.
6. Tap when you’re done with voicemail three point menu in the upper right, then tap Delete the transcription.
Now that you’ve mastered Direct Voicemail, you can save some money on your future phone bills by using it instead of your carrier’s Visual Voicemail system. Direct Voicemail may not work if your phone is offline for some reason, in which case it will redirect voicemail back to your carrier’s default voicemail system, but it’s unlikely you’ll encounter this problem most of the time.
Even with this limitation, I personally would go the direct Voicemail route to save money each month. Visual Voicemail is great and all, but if I can get the feature for free most of the time, you better believe that’s the route I’m going!
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