Google’s Name Display screen is the very best use of AI on Pixel telephones

In 2025, you would be fairly hard-pressed to discover a newly launched smartphone that does not tout superior AI options in its gross sales pitch. Whether or not we’re speaking in regards to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, or another variety of high-end handsets, AI has change into the secret relating to flashy new software program experiences.

Cellphone makers have been scrambling to leap on the generative AI (genAI) bandwagon, making an attempt to one-up one another with a mixture of writing instruments, generative picture creation apps, and extra. This has resulted in a weird actuality by which Apple Intelligence advertisements show mice consuming slices of pizza, and Samsung advertisements proclaim that the most recent Galaxy AI telephone is, in truth, a Galaxy AI telephone.

As time marches ahead, nonetheless, I really feel a way of AI oversaturation brewing beneath the floor. Not all AI options have confirmed significantly helpful in the true world, and it feels as if the dam is on observe to burst à la dot-com bubble.

That being mentioned, there are uncommon cases by which an AI-powered function genuinely speaks to me. Working example: Google’s Call Screen feature, which is completely out there on fashionable Pixel phones. The software uses AI to detect spam calls, and intelligently shuts them down earlier than they’ll change into a nuisance.

Not all synthetic intelligence options are made equal

AI options ought to work silently within the background, with out the necessity for consumer enter

Pocket-lint / Google

Google’s Pixel Call Screen is a genuinely useful gizmo, and it is completely the best approach to harness the facility of AI. Working solely on-device (with out the necessity for an lively Wi-Fi or mobile knowledge connection), the function analyzes incoming telephone calls and declines the spam-worthy ones in your behalf.

To be clear, call filtering itself is not a brand new expertise. Moderately, it is using on-device AI algorithms, combined with Google’s massive spam quantity database, that makes the function stand out from different options.

What makes Name Display screen distinctly completely different from many different AI options, is its frictionless design. There is not any notification prompting you {that a} spam name is underway, and there are not any points with the software working in non-connected areas. Most significantly, the function does its job — it really works fairly nicely, in truth.

Name Display screen additionally solves a really actual, very annoying drawback. Telemarketing, robocalling, and rip-off artist telephone calls proceed to run rampant, and so they hassle me to no finish every time I swap my SIM card to, say, an iPhone.

Name Display screen excels as a result of it really works silently behind the scenes, and it does so with out falling into the entice of fixing an issue that does not exist. As fascinating as it’s to generate a sketched rendition of my face utilizing GenAI, or to have a block of textual content rewritten in Shakespearean English, I have not touched such options past utilizing them as glorified occasion tips.

For some time now, Google’s Pixel mantra has been to create the neatest smartphone of all of them. I hope to see the corporate proceed so as to add Name Display screen-esque options to the Pixel expertise over time. If it will possibly efficiently achieve this, the Pixel may simply overtake its AI-touting competitors within the intelligence division by fairly a big margin.

Associated

What is Google Call Screen, how to turn it on, and where is it available?

Google affords a call-screening function for Pixel telephone customers known as Name Display screen. It is designed that can assist you higher perceive who is asking.