You might soon be able to record phone calls on Android with Google’s Phone app

Google’s Phone app, the one used in Pixel and Android One devices, may let you record calls on your smartphone soon.

Google’s Phone app, the one used in Pixel and Android One devices, may let you record calls on your smartphone soon. (Reuters)

Being able to record a phone call can be very helpful at certain times, especially if you are interviewing people over the phone. In those instances it is really tedious to rig up a whole microphone/second phone set-up to ensure you record the audio right.

Despite that, often recordings come back broken, disrupted and incomplete depending on a whole number of external factors. If you could easily record a call on your phone, the only thing that could hinder the process is your network.

While some Android devices come in with a call recording feature, it is not universal. Google's Phone app, the one used in Pixel and Android One devices, may let you record calls on your smartphone soon.

A code spotted by Mishaal Rahman from XDA in the Google Phone app suggests an upcoming overhaul that will bring in call recording options on Android devices. However, this is not a first for Android. Recording phone calls was possible "prior to Android Pie" and "there hasn't been an official call recording API since Android Marshmallow".

Before we get excited, there is no clarity if this call recording feature will ever roll out widely. XDA has pointed out that Xiaomi has recently announced a call recording feature, so it is possible that this Google code could be related to that.

Google had said that it's working to "bring back call recording API's to future versions of Android, which would lead to more reliable third party solutions". Last year, Google said that it had "skipped doing so in Android Q because it hadn't quite puzzled out how to implement the feature securely". By the time Android 11 comes around, Google might be ready for this or by this year's Google I/O.