Google Tensor on the Pixel 6 brings major improvements to Call Screen and Voice Typing

Google has been talking about its new “Tensor” System-on-a-Chip for a while now, but we’ve been in the dark regarding specific details. Today is the launch day for the Pixel 6, the first device powered by Google Tensor, and Google has finally revealed technical details about the chip. As it turns out, it brings some major improvements to Google’s previous Machine Learning capabilities on smartphones, particularly in both Google’s call screen and in voice typing.

From today, the Google Pixel 6 and the Google Pixel 6 Pro will see some major improvements in the Phone app features like Wait Times and Direct my Call. You’ll see projected wait times for how long it will be before a representative will get back to you, and Direct My Call turns automated responses into buttons for you to tap on your phone. This means you won’t need to remember all of the specific options. This is thanks to the Pixel 6’s more advanced language processing capabilities. The company also announced that “Hold for Me” will be expanded from the U.S. to Australia, Canada, and Japan, too, and the Assistant can recognize the difference between a person, a recorded message, and music.

Call Screen is also rolling out to more countries than just the U.S., including users in the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. Google says its latest on-device speech models make transcriptions more accurate than ever thanks to Tensor. Those same improvements are also available when voice typing on your smartphone, and Google says that its transcriptions are better than ever. It takes input from contacts on your smartphone to get name spellings right, it automatically adds pronunciations, and understands corrections and commands based on the context. Saying “send” on its own won’t type the word “send”, and will, instead, actually send the message.

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