Phone By Google’s ‘Expressive Calling’ Feature Begins Rolling Out To Beta Users

Google has begun rolling out its new Expressive Calling feature in the Phone by Google app after announcing it earlier this month. It’s out to some beta users now, and the main mission of this update is to make emergency calls more immediately noticeable using visual and haptic indicators. Rather than focusing strictly on regular alerts, Expressive Calling puts actual calls that need urgent attention into context. Though the feature remains limited for now, it provides a clear look into what Google wants to do to fix real-world calling, especially when you have Do Not Disturb turned on. Here’s what the feature is, how it works and who can use it (and what to expect in this early phase of a long rollout).

How to Check If Expressive Calling Is Available

Here’s how beta users can confirm whether the feature is available by opening up the Phone by Google app, tapping their phone’s settings backend, then:

Phone Settings > General > Expressive Calling

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With the exception of the top toggle, named “Enhance calling with visual and haptic feedback”, all these options are not available by default. Individuals can also select if urgent calls should be allowed to break through Do Not Disturb, according to personal preference.

How Expressive Calling Works

It’s still in testing, so for it to work, both the caller and recipient need to be using the Phone by Google beta app (version 203) at this point.

Eligible users will see a screen prompt when they go to place the call indicating whether they would like to mark the call as “urgent”. Pressing “Notify” sends a louder, longer alert to the recipient.

The call comes in on the other end with an “It’s urgent!” text on an animated siren emoji. A missed call is marked as urgent in the call history so you can see it at a glance.

Beta-Only for Now

Expressive Calling is exclusive to the beta channel for now, and there’s no word yet on when it might be available more broadly for all stable folks. Because the feature requires that both users have the same version of an app, this new capability will only become more useful as additional individuals pick up the update.

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Other Phone by Google Updates

Meanwhile, Phone by Google version 202 is rolling out to its stable channel. A few changes to the interface are still exclusive for beta users, though — including its shorter bottom bar and the “Keep portrait mode” setting. These changes are not yet live through a wider server-side implementation.

Final Thoughts

Expressive calling demonstrates what Google’s vision for modernising the phone call can be, with urgency and context where it matters most, they said. Although the feature is only in beta and rather rudimentary at this point, you can easily imagine real-world applications, especially time-based communication. Expressive Calling might be a genuinely useful addition to the core phone call experience on Android rather than just an aesthetic one if it makes its way to the stable channel and gains wider support.