Google seems to be working on adding native call recording support to its Phone app. A teardown of the latest version of the app by the folks over at XDA Developers points to references and icons hinting at call recording support.
The call recording button will show up on the call screen thereby allowing users to start the recording. At the moment, it is unclear if Google will bring call recording feature to its Pixel and Android One devices or if it is adding call recording support to the app for other reasons.
The Phone app from Google has never officially supported call recording and the company never provided an official API for the same as well. Up until Android 8.1 Oreo, third-party apps used workarounds to offer call recording feature but Google pulled the plug on all such hacks with Android 9.0 Pie. Since then, it has been up to Android OEMs to natively enable call recording in their devices. If an Android device does not ship with call recording feature built-in, there is no way to add the feature to the device using any app or without rooting it.
However, Google is working on an official call recording API and it is possible that it is readying the Phone app for that. The references to call recording support in the Google Phone app comes days after Xiaomi announced that it will ship its devices in Europe with Google's Phone app instead of the MIUI one.
The Dialer app in MIUI supports native call recording so the move to Google's Phone app led many users to worry that they would lose this functionality. Now, it looks like Google is working on adding call recording support to its Phone app before Xiaomi gets around to shipping its devices with the app.
Do you miss the call recording functionality on your Android device? Drop a comment and let us know!
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