Yeup, I finally broke down went from Android -> IPhone 16 Pro. I like a lot about Apple's personal security policies for their consumers vs Google, but damn, I miss google's automatic call spam detection and management. All day long my Apple phone rings, and I just have to ignore the calls.

It’s my biggest gripe. They can pretty accurately flag a number as Spam or Telemarketing but in the “Silence Unknown Callers” setting I can only silence every single unknown caller. I can’t silence every single number that’s not in my contacts. When the plumber calls to confirm he’s in route, my phone needs to ring. Stuff like that.

iphone has been enshittified for several years now, it seems apple engineers are not using their own phones any more. I can understand it - when you're a millionaire just from your corporate job you won't be a stressed power user of your own iphones.

It’s not that it got worse, this feature has just never been great. It just feels half baked , which I agree a lot of Apple software has been trending towards. That said, what has increased is the volume of spam calls. So the importance of this feature has also increased.

It’s sad because this seems like such a low hanging fruit for a big improvement. At some point in the relatively recent past, they added the indicator of the caller being a spammer or telemarketer. Seems like that would have been a good time to also enhance this filter but it seems nobody ever connected the dots on that one. Or if I’m being even more cynical, some engineer actually decided he’d rather everyone see his work on every incoming spam call instead of his work quietly improving everyone’s experience

>some engineer actually decided

No sane person would flaunt Apple secrecy in such a fashion whilst employed there.

>instead of his work quietly improving everyone’s experiBence

Laughable that you feel that Apple engineers have the capacity for this kind of desire in 2025. If they did, Xcode would be way better to use. They cant even quietly improve their own experience.

Whatever man, I'm not trying to shit on them like you want me to. I think adding this simple feature that is likely little more than a line or two of code is a night an day comparison to overhauling something like Xcode to meet your definition of what "better" means

That seems...overly dramatic. Further, enshittification as a concept generally refers to VC/growth-hacking style situations.

I would have assumed an unknown caller was defined as any number not in your contacts. what is it instead?

In the realm of Caller ID, a phone number may be "PRIVATE" (or "WITHHELD") or "UNKNOWN". An "UNKNOWN" Caller ID cannot display any name nor any number, because... they are not known to the switch.

Therefore, an unknown number that can be blocked/ignored by your phone or the app is one that doesn't support Caller ID's name or number functions. It doesn't have anything to do with who's in your Contacts app, because of course those consist of known names and known numbers.

There is a defined type “Unknown” which I think you’re describing but it’s Not exactly how the iOS feature works. It says let’s through those in your contacts or who you’ve had recent conversations with and Siri suggestions. It’s basically a dumb proxy for letting through people you might actually want to talk with. Except sometimes you don’t know who/where/when those calls are coming from and I haven’t spoken to them before.

I've failed to semantically parse your statements

Why would a number in your contacts be considered "unknown"

it is super fucking easy. it has been a decade since I answered an unknown number. if plumber calls (and I dont have her/his number stored) it goes to voicemail. I then call known company number. The communication is always one-way, I call you. I never answer. You follow this one very simple rule and you good :)

Theres plenty of situations where this doesn't work. If you're called from a business central line and you don't know their extension you just call back and get the normal call tree which can take you forever to get through. Or if you're on the "cancellation list" for an appointment if they can't get through to you, they don't wait for you to call back, they just go on to the next person to schedule in their open slot.

it always works mate, it always works

Taxi cab dispatchers will do this for sure. They do callbacks to “confirm” your ride, especially when busy, because if you don’t answer, they simply drop your request on the sticky office floor.

this is a loss of business for them, not my problem. it is 2025, if they do not have map where i can track where they are etc.. imma not going to be using that service...

So this app that millions of people use, probably most of the ~1.4 billion iPhone users… instead of making some minor edits to the settings to make it better for a lot of people, the solution is we all just need to use the app the way you do?

Not even going to consider that some people are more phone dependent and not just fielding an occasional call from their lost dasher or uber driver. Overly simplistic view on the world, you need to think beyond your use cases and make software that is beneficial to the entire user base. It’s the whole point of having a settings section of the app, to allow some custom behaviors tailored to your needs and some you won’t use because they are tailored towards someone else’s needs

Glad it works for you, I’m not allergic to the phone like seemingly everyone else so I strive to minimize phone tag BS and would rather answer the calls I get and filter out known spam, it’s not rocket science it’s probably only 2 lines of code in the phone app

If call is spam and ignore spam option enabled, send call to voicemail.

That’s it, a simple line of code. Just make the option selectable and it’s done.

This could have been solved with regulation. Mandate delivery of all available phone call metadata to every digital telephone. Mandate that mobile phone operating systems must expose that data to apps approved by the user.

We'd have hundreds of enshittification-ready VC-backed apps to fix spam calls overnight.

Instead, we got STIR/SHAKEN mandates, which is just a soft way of having the legacy telcos "promise to fix it for you."

I believe there are Phone app alternatives, I just don’t trust them

I feel like Apples M.O. on software is to build the lowest passable set of features in their apps, never enhance them, allow third parties to delve into the high functionality/spec software. Mail is horrible, Camera good enough for most people, for me personally even Safari is in this camp; I’d swap any of those for a third party solution without much thought. Phone app becomes a bit to much of a security risk to use a third party, such that I’d never even consider leaving the default Phone app.

I have my phone set to silence Unknown callers. What did you have setup on the Pixel before to block them?

That’s too heavy handed for me. I get valid calls that I need to answer that aren’t in my contacts.

The calls they flag as potential spam and telemarketers has been 100% accurate in my experience so i wish I could just silence those

Usually you are expecting these calls tho so you can turn off that feature when you do. If said person calls often, add them to your contacts.

They could also just easily enhance the feature right? It’s an extra if statement in the code. I get enough calls that it’s not practical to constantly edit a setting that’s like this. There’s nothing else in the settings app I change regularly, it’s mostly set and forget.

It’s much better to just silence every spam call manually instead of having to go into voicemail, listen , decide if I need to respond, hope that I’m acting quickly enough that the other person answers when I ring them back, etc. i imagine this works for a lot of people. But if you get enough calls, or get urgent calls for any reason, it’s not ideal.

For those that can’t imagine the use cases. Consider you are primary contact for your elderly parent. If they fall in the middle of the night you might be getting a call from any random number. Do not disturb isn’t an option and sometimes the EMS guys will call you from their personal cell phone. Even some services like home security will call from random numbers. If ask a plumber to come over, some random technician will call from their device to talk. If a potential client gets my number somehow, I’d prefer to answer versus them get my voicemail.

You have to also factor in that a lot of people don’t even like leaving voicemail so they don’t leave one and I’m left guessing if it mattered that

I just see if they leave a message. If they don’t, they’re sorted. If they do I can always call them back.

I need calls from unknown numbers (doctors, vendors, etc.) Pixel would flag spam calls and not ring, all the unknown-but-valid callers got through without issue.

Also, on TMobile if you dial #662#, it'll block the Scam Likely calls at the carrier.

I had no idea. Thank you!

Oh man. They start at 7AM and end around 4-5ish PM. I was hoping the war between Pakistan and India would make these stop. Jk obv. Nobody likes wars. But other than Tmobile are there similar methods for different providers? It can get so annoying. I did restrict calls from known numbers only.

If it’s says Rogers you know it’s a scam

iPhone user here. I put on airplane mode unless I'm making or expecting a call. Otherwise, I make it clear that email is my primary form of communication.

I don’t get any calls, seems to be an US problem?

Unfortunately, the US phone network is indeed completely unusable without a good spam call filter.

US and Canada

I'm in Europe and get at least one a day.

I never answer my phone, also turned off sound except alarms a couple years ago

What about while job hunting?

Email or voice mail

"Yeah yeah... installing your app now... oh there is an error... will try again..."

You turn off the notifications from unknown callers? How does Android handle it?

Sometimes you need to answer calls from unknown numbers.

Google's call screening feature picks up the phone before it rings and asks the caller why they're calling. If they actually give a good reason, then it shows you the reason as text and you can decide whether to hang up on them or answer. https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387

Settings -> Phone -> Silence Unknown callers

Yeah you went the wrong way there brother.

Unfortunately blocking all unknown calls is the only way to sanity. Otherwise we're talking 6-9 calls coming in ALL DAY, EVERY DAY.

The calls are coming from new numbers, across multiple area codes. A few months ago I would have advised using Begone (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/begone-spam-call-blocker/id159...) to block but that only worked since these calls were isolated to blocks of area codes that were pretty safe to block like 888-XXX-XXXX, but now ZERO of these calls are using a fixed area code that would be relative safe to block.

I can't block all calls, but the screening feature on my Pixel did an immense job of filtering out the spam.

answer the call and immediately put it on mute. they will hang up and stop calling

Don't you have caller-pays in the US?

I have the exact same experience. I felt like I went back to a phone from 2018.

Verizon (and I assume many other US carriers) offer junk call identification which your iPhone can block if you have ”Silence Junk Callers” toggled in Settings > Phone > Call Blocking & Identification.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/block-or-avoid-unwant...