[Update: In Play Store] Google Dialer Voicemail Transcription Starting to Roll Out More Widely for T-Mobile Users

Update 2/26/18: An update to Google Phone app version 17.0.186697879 is now rolling out on the Play Store that officially adds support. The change-log reads “Google-powered voicemail transcription for T-Mobile USA users.

In 2016 Google, added support for Verizon’s Visual Voicemail service to the Google Dialer application, saving subscribers who paid a monthly fee the trouble of having to dial into their voicemail inboxes. Late last year, Google rolled out an update to the app that laid the groundwork for visual voicemail support on additional carriers. And sure enough, some T-Mobile customers are seeing voicemail transcriptions in the Google Dialer.

This week, several T-Mobile subscribers in the XDA community, including an XDA Portal staff member, received a prompt about the Google Dialer’s visual voicemail feature. It gives the option of enabling it, or leaving it disabled. “See an listen to your messages, without having to call voicemail,” the prompt reads. “Transcripts of your voicemail are provided by Google’s free transcription service.”

If you’ve used Google Voice, the new voicemail transcription feature might look familiar. Here’s how it works: Google’s servers analyze your incoming voicemail, transcribe it to text, and deliver both the transcription and audio recording to the Google Dialer app. Once visual voicemail is enabled, the process is entirely automatic — a transcription appears seconds after you receive a voicemail.

It’s important to note that the Google Dialer’s visual voicemail integration isn’t the same as Android 8.0 Oreo’s VisualVoicemailService API, which extends support for OMPT and similar services to third-party dialer apps. It, like the newest version of the Google Dialer, can handle incoming voicemails, control the playback of voicemails, and allow apps to delete them, but it was implemented in API level 26 — if you’re on Android Nougat or an earlier version of Android, apps that require it won’t work on your smartphone.

T-Mobile and Google have yet to confirm the rollout of visual voicemail in the Google Dialer, but if the reports so far are any indication, it won’t be long before it comes to more subscribers.

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