2024-05-06 06:44:01
Google wants to spice up phone calls with audio emojis. However, some of these extraordinary sound experiences seem quite unusual.
A loud fart during a phone call? A heart-melting cry sounding from a trumpet? This could soon become a reality. Google is apparently planning to integrate audio emojis into the phone app on its Android operating system.
As the tech blog “9to5Google” reports, a new function is intended to offer various sound effects that users can play at the touch of a button during a conversation. Accordingly, the following six tones are already available for testing in a beta version of the phone app:
- clapping (applause)
- Laugh
- Party (streamers)
- Crying (trombone)
- Fart
- Tusch (drums)
These audio emojis are used either via a button in the phone menu or a button displayed above it. As soon as one of these elements is clicked, a menu opens where you can select and play the emojis with a tap of your finger.
User enthusiasm is likely to be limited
To prevent telephone conversations from being flooded with these sounds, Google has also introduced a kind of compulsory pause after each audio emoji. This is intended to prevent the sounds from being played one after the other in quick succession. If you don’t like the new function, you can turn it off, according to “9to5Google”. However, this only applies to sending the audio emojis – not to receiving them.
While some users will certainly enjoy the audio emojis, many will probably find them annoying. It remains to be seen when the function will be available as an Android update and whether the “fart button” will actually be part of the final offer. As is usual with Google, such functions usually end up in the regular app updates – and thus on our smartphones.