Google has been taking the fight against call spam pretty seriously these days. Things started back in 2016 with a (literal) big red warning sign and have progressed to formal verification of callers. Also joining the act last year was Call Screen, a Pixel exclusive answering system that removes any reason to directly interact with the spammers. While it was a safe bet that Call Screen would eventually transition outside of Google’s own handsets, we now have a good reason to expect that to happen, and it will begin with some Motorola and Nokia phones.
Spotted by hkyq on Reddit, two new flags have been added for Google’s Phone app with some pretty telling names:
__data_rollout__SpeakEasy.CallScreenEnglishUsForMoto__launched__
__data_rollout__SpeakEasy.CallScreenEnglishUsForNokia__launched__
Dissection of the names probably isn’t necessary, but as regular teardown readers may recall, SpeakEasy is the codename for Call Screen, and the rest of the name is pretty straightforward. Of course, the two lines also include the Moto and Nokia names. These flags are similar to another pair that belong to the recent beta test of Call Screen in Canada.
The presence of these flags is all but a definite sign that Call Screen is expanding to more phones. However, they are both disabled, suggesting that a launch hasn’t happened yet, and there aren’t any clues to indicate a timeline for when it might happen.
Since the Google Phone app only appears on Google-supported handsets, it’s safe to say that Call Screen will only expand to Android One phones which makes up part of Motorola’s lineup and all of Nokia’s recent phones.
