Your smartphone may now include features to improve the quality of your calls.

Apple and Google seek to improve the audio quality of everyday cell phone conversations. Here is how they function.

You undoubtedly still find yourself making the occasional conventional phone call in between answering emails, sending texts, and sorting through DMs. And if you're like a lot of our readers, you've undoubtedly realized that such calls frequently sound less than stellar.

The Help Desk has already discussed this subject and provided some advice for enhancing your call quality while on the fly. But since then, manufacturers of smartphones like Google and Apple have incorporated new capabilities that might help your calls sound better than normal.

What you should understand regarding them as well as how to utilize them is as follows:

iPhone voice isolation

Fun fact: Over the past year or two, Apple iPhones running iOS 15 or newer have come with a Voice Isolation function that seeks to make it simpler for other individuals to overhear you on calls by reducing background noise. The problem? It didn't perform well at all with regular phone calls and only supported calls made through certain applications.

With the release of iOS 16.4 by Apple just at the end of the month of March, that situation altered. Now, you may use the functionality to make calls while rushing about and make yourself sound clearer:

1. To access the Control Center while on a call, swipe downward from the upper-right corner of the screen.

2. Look for the "Mic mode" option and choose it.

3. Choose "Voice isolation" as your third step.

The most crucial thing to keep in mind is that this function improves how you sound to the individual who is on the other side of the line, instead of the other way around. Unless they also turn on the functionality on their end.

But how effectively does it really function? To be honest, better than I anticipated. While rushing about in the heart of San Francisco and battling the lunchtime noise, we conducted a few experimental calls; with the feature activated, there was a noticeable reduction in the volume of ambient noise people might hear on the opposite end. Most of the time, my voice was audible and clear.

Most of the time, Voice Isolation worked as advertised, although occasionally it made my voice seem a little artificial. Although the folks I spoke to thought the change was more beneficial than hearing more ambient noise, you might want to keep this option off until you know you'll need to call someone from a noisy location.

Unambiguous call for Google Pixels

Google often releases new feature upgrades for its Pixel smartphones over the course of the year, and a "feature drop" in December gave some Pixel models access to a brand-new Clear Calling function.

Theoretically, Google's strategy in this case makes a bit more sense than Apple's. Every incoming call sounds better than it typically would as soon as your smartphone has an internet connection. But, there is a major catch: this function is only compatible with the company's Pixel 7 handsets, which were unveiled this year. Owners of the Pixel 6 versions from last year are ineligible, as are those who possess almost any other type of Android smartphone.

Google's Tensor G2 chipset was expressly necessary for the capability to function, said company spokesman Matt Flegal in an email.

This is how to activate Clear Calling on a Google Pixel 7 or Google 7 Pro smartphone:

1. Launch the Settings program.

2. Look for "Sound & Vibration" and tap it.

3. Find "Clear calling" by scrolling down and tapping it.

4. Slide the "Use clear calling" switch to the right.

The individuals listening to me through a Pixel 7 Pro couldn't tell much of a difference when the function was on or off while I sprinted about the city making calls adjacent to idle trucks and approaching traffic.

The people I was talking to scarcely noticed background sound from the Pixel's mic in the first place, so it turns out it wasn't a software issue. Nonetheless, the change was still very slight. In a different test, I spoke while washing my hands, which is something I probably do more often than I should.

What about different phone producers?

Not just Google and Apple are attempting to use software to improve our phone calls. A comparable function, dubbed Voice Focus, is built into a few of the more budget-friendly smartphone models that Samsung sells internationally. The Voice Focus function isn't accessible on any of the company's smartphones it offers in The Us, despite some of its higher-end handsets, including the showy S22 phones unveiled earlier this year, including several microphones to enhance your speech quality on phone calls.