T-Mobile officially retired its 2G GSM network on August 3, 2026, marking the end of 2G service from all three major U.S. carriers. With AT&T having discontinued 2G in 2017 and Verizon following in 2020, devices that rely solely on the older standard—including the original 2007 iPhone — can no longer connect to any cellular network in the United States. The move also affects remaining smartphones, alarm systems, payment terminals, and other IoT devices still using 2G, though T-Mobile had given customers advance notice to upgrade or transition.
T-Mobile kept its 2G network active because it still had some legacy customers who were using it. Some customers visiting the United States and using international roaming carrier agreements for connectivity also needed 2G for voice calling, but T-Mobile worked with carriers globally to prepare for the end of its 2G network.
Customers who were still on T-Mobile’s 2G network were warned well ahead of time about the shutdown and given time to transition. Smartphones, alarm panels, payment terminals, and other IoT accessories that used 2G will no longer function.
AT&T ended support for 2G almost a decade ago in 2017, and Verizon stopped supporting 2G in 2020. Now that no carriers in the U.S. support 2G, legacy devices like the original iPhone will not be able to connect to any cellular network.
MacDailyNews Take: Time marches on!
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The post T-Mobile shuts down 2G network, ending U.S. cellular service for Apple’s original iPhone appeared first on MacDailyNews.
An exquisitely preserved specimen of Austronaga minuta, a small, long-necked marine reptile from the Triassic of China, contains a fossilized stomach, liver and intestines, offering paleontologists their oldest detailed glimpse yet of how early reptiles digested food.
The post 244-Million-Year-Old Fossil Preserves Earliest Reptilian Digestive System appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
The 13-sided tile that solved a half-century-old math problem, discovered by an amateur mathematician at his kitchen table in 2022, turns out to bend light into a twisting pinwheel unlike anything produced by an ordinary crystal, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
The work, from physicists at the University of Tokyo and NTT’s Nanophotonics Center in Japan, marks the first time anyone has taken the celebrated “einstein” tile—a term derived from the German ein Stein, meaning “one stone,” and unrelated to the famous physicist—out of pure mathematics and asked what it does to light.
The answer is a form of optical handedness that even quasicrystals, the closest known relatives of this structure, do not possess.
Unlike circles or squares, which are identical when mirrored, our hands are not. They may be reflections of each other, but you can’t place one perfectly on top of the other, no matter how you rotate it. Likewise, a handed structure “notices” the difference between left- and right-circularly polarized light, while a mirror-symmetric structure—such as a circle—cannot. The flat tile pattern has no mirror image identical to itself, much like your hands, and that asymmetry becomes imprinted onto the light it diffracts.
“We found that the diffraction patterns themselves become chiral because the structure lacks mirror symmetry,” Masaya Notomi, the study’s senior author, explained in a press statement. “This kind of optical response is fundamentally different from that observed in conventional quasicrystalline materials.”
To see why that matters, it helps to go back to the shape.
Mathematicians had pursued a particular puzzle for roughly 50 years, known as the “Einstein problem.” The question was whether a single shape could completely tile a flat plane, but only in a pattern that never repeats. Roger Penrose reduced the problem to two tiles in the 1970s. Finding a single tile remained out of reach.
Then, in November 2022, David Smith, an amateur mathematician and retired print technician from Bridlington, England, found one while tinkering with shape-tiling software. He cut copies out of cardstock, laid them across his table, and watched the pattern refuse to settle. He nicknamed it “the hat” because it looks vaguely like a fedora. Smith and three collaborators posted the proof in March 2023, and it made news around the world.
That same year, a 2023 theory paper by physicist Joshua Socolar had already predicted chiral diffraction from hat tilings, but there was one wrinkle. The hat needs its own mirror image sprinkled among the tiles to work, a hint of handedness baked into the geometry. That handedness is exactly what the new study chases into the behavior of light, so to do it, the team led by Yuto Moritake did something a mathematician would never bother with: they built the thing.
They marked the center of each hat tile with a point, producing a pattern with perfect threefold rotational symmetry (it looks identical when you turn it a third of the way around) but no mirror symmetry, meaning its reflection is a genuinely different object. Then they etched that pattern into a 350-nanometer-thick film of silicon nitride, drilling 372,100 tiny holes across a patch half a millimeter on a side.
Shine a laser through a regular grid of holes, and you get a neat, symmetric spray of dots on the far wall—a diffraction pattern, the same effect that throws rainbows off a CD. The team fired a green laser at their aperiodic version and photographed what came out.
It was a pinwheel.
The diffraction pattern was sharp and filled with bright, well-defined spots—the signature of long-range order—and evidence that the structure behaves like a true quasicrystal despite never repeating. But unlike conventional diffraction patterns, the entire arrangement twisted in one direction, with no mirror symmetry anywhere in the image. When the researchers repeated the experiment using the mirror-image version of the tile, the pinwheel twisted in the opposite direction.
So the team did what all scientists do in these situations. They just started blasting different kinds of light at it.
“Because the structure is chiral, a circular-polarization dependence should not be forbidden. But on the first trial, I couldn’t find any difference. I thought it might be very weak, so I changed the camera to a more sensitive one — and then I finally found it,” Moritake told The Debrief. “I somehow expected it, but I was still surprised when I found it.”
The strange result came with that circularly polarized light test. It’s a light whose electric field corkscrews as it travels, clockwise or counterclockwise. The pattern responded differently depending on which way the light was spinning. Feed it left-handed light and certain spots brightened; feed it right-handed light and different ones did. That behavior, the authors note, has never been seen in a conventional quasicrystal.
Underneath all of it sits a piece of elegant bookkeeping. The angle of the pinwheel’s twist, about 15.5 degrees, isn’t arbitrary. Moritake’s team showed that it falls straight out of the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio, the same numbers that govern the tile’s geometry. The shape’s real-world twist is written directly into how it scatters light.
The findings are a scientific first, but the paper is quick to point out that this is fundamental physics and not a product. There is no device here, and the authors are careful to call their structure a possible “platform” rather than a working component. The chirality at play is a strictly two-dimensional kind (the absence of a mirror line within the flat pattern), not the three-dimensional handedness of a molecule or, you know, your hands.
“At least, this effect is forbidden in an inversion-symmetric structure, so it reflects the chiral nature of the monotile,” Moritake said. “Of course, this effect could appear in other structures too. But I don’t know of another lattice that is both chiral and quasiperiodic like this one.”
Still, the result does something basic research quietly does all the time: it takes an object discovered for no reason beyond that it was beautiful and finds that nature had a use for it. Breaking a structure’s mirror symmetry is how physicists coax materials into nonlinear optical tricks and polarization-sensitive behavior, and aperiodic tiles offer a new and largely unexplored way in.
“Mathematical discoveries have always led to important developments in physics,” Moritake said. “The monotile is generated from a honeycomb frame, and in nanophotonics, the honeycomb lattice is used constantly because it produces interesting phenomena — graphene is the representative example. So I thought the monotile lattice might be interesting in real physics too.”
For a shape that started as a puzzle on a hobbyist’s kitchen table, that’s a long way to travel.
MJ Banias is a co-founder of The Debrief, covering science and technology news. You can email him at mj@thedebrief.org or follow him on LinkedIn.
Chinese smartphone makers have been followers in the global market, embracing the concepts and paradigms set in the past 20 years by Apple and Google. But AI may be giving the Chinese an opportunity to break away and set their own path forward.
Specifically, Chinese companies are integrating AI more fully into smartphones, and also using AI for limited robotics in phones. Here’s what you need to know about these emerging trends.
China’s ZTE recently showed its Nubia NaviX Ultra. The phone runs ByteDance’s Doubao AI agent, which users can access with voice commands or by pressing a button on the phone. The phone has no home screen and no conventional app store.
Another Chinese company, called StepFun — it was founded in 2023 by Jiang Daxin, a former Microsoft vice president and chief scientist at Microsoft’s Software Technology Center Asia — sells a phone called the StepX Neo. It runs a proprietary operating system called Step AOS based on Android, Linux, and an RTOS containing a built-in AI agent called Step Amoo. The StepX Neo splits phone functions into four primitives (communication, apps, files, system tools) that the agent recombines based on the stated goals of the user.
Honor, a phone maker spun off from Huawei, has an AI agent the company built with input from Alibaba called the YOYO Intelligent Agent. It ships on Honor’s entire MagicOS 10-eligible lineup.
Note: an American company is enabling this. All three phones use Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) to give system-level access to the agents.
None of these phones will become available in the United States. ZTE is banned from the US by the FCC over national-security concerns, while the StepFun and Honor phones are built for the Chinese market with no US version planned.
All modern smartphones can run AI. By simply visiting the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, anyone can download dozens of AI apps, including those offered by the frontier model companies. Or they can use the AI services and tools built in to phones by Apple and Google.
What’s different about the new agentic AI phones in China is that the operating system itself has an agentic AI layer that enables it to function across apps and instead of apps.
While agentic AI phones represent a minority of the current market, they feel like the future. And that future is consequential. First, it’s a another step toward independence from Android. Google’s services layer is already gone from China. Now the Android app layer is being replaced by vertically integrated agent stacks owned by Chinese super-app companies.
Despite building agentic features that cross app boundaries to a limited degree, Apple and Google are unlikely to allow third-party agents to replace the app layer of their mobile OSs anytime soon.
Apple takes 15% to 30% of app revenue. And (according to an estimate introduced during the Epic v. Apple/Google litigation but not confirmed by Google), the Play Store has historically accounted for somewhere between 17% and 26% of Google’s operating income. The entire economic logic of iOS and Android depends on apps. An agentic layer that dissolves those apps into tasks isn’t something either company wants to think about. The Chinese OEMs can blow up the app model because they had no stake in it.
Meanwhile, the AI trend is suffocating mobile app in-app purchases, which dropped by roughly 40% by early 2026, even as people pay more for those purchases compared to a few years ago (because they’re dominated by subscriptions to AI and vibe-coded apps). In other words, even inside the app stores, there’s a shift from the old app model to AI replacements.
AI is not only changing the software model, but the hardware model, too.
Another categorical way China is splitting off from the global smartphone concept is the nascent market of robot phones. A robot phone is one that uses AI to control physical robotic components on an actual phone.
The leading contender in this field is a device called the Honor Robot Phone, which I wrote about in March. A leaked unboxing video of the Honor Robot Phone appeared this week on the Chinese social network Weibo.
The robotic element is a gimbal with a 200-megapixel camera on it. One basic use is that the phone can remain stationary while propped up on a table or clamped to a tripod, while the camera tracks a moving subject using AI. Another use is to walk while using it and let the gimbal smooth out the jiggling and movement. Software on the phone also enables automated cinematic special effects.
But the real leap forward is in “self expression” for the phone. The Honor Robot Phone exhibits subtle Attachment Economy features. It shakes its “head” no and nods yes. And it can do a “backflip” to “cheer you up.” The phone gets a personality.
Honor plans to launch the phone on Aug. 12 in China.
So-called “robot phones” are even more rare in China than agentic AI phones. Still, the Honor Robot Phone represents another Chinese departure from the Silicon Valley smartphone hardware model of a static pane of glass. The Honor Robot Phone has a body. It feels like the future, too, as it’s one of the rare products in the emerging Attachment Economy, where humanlike attributes (in this case, gestures and body language) are deployed to make the consumer more “attached” to devices that seem like they have thoughts and feelings.
As the Chinese smartphone market splits off from the American one, it presents an alternative for the world. Because if the agentic AI phones succeed in China, they’ll almost certainly be offered internationally.
That represents not only hardware sales, but the penetration of Chinese super-apps, Chinese financial services, Chinese AI-based information (and along with it, the Chinese government’s world view, we can expect).
The only question is: Will the world prefer the Chinese agentic AI approach or the US AI app model?
Adding to the complexity is the coming wave of AI wearables, most of which will likely be wirelessly “tethered” to smartphones that provide intelligence and connectivity. Soon, we’ll be conversing with our glasses and watches. Our glasses and watches will be “conversing” with our phones. And our phones will be conversing with AI models that represent the values, beliefs and biases of their creators.
The Chinese agentic AI movement represents a split in how phones work and how the people worldwide interact with information, technology and each other.
AI disclosures: This article is 100% human-written by the author, Mike Elgan. Some research, ideation, and fact- and grammar-checking was performed using AI tools.
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on smartphones and Android, follow Dominic Preston. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
Believe it or not, it didn't all start with Samsung. Royole, a now-bankrupt manufacturer of flexible displays, was the first to release a commercial folding phone, the "charmingly awful" FlexPai. Samsung's first Galaxy Fold followed a year later, plagued by a variety of faults that saw review units break within days. That launch went so badly that it prompted Chinese riva …
Fã de jogos de mistério e aventuras "point and click"? Case Solved: The London Files coloca os jogadores no papel de um detetive que tem como missão investigar uma série de crimes, num título que promete pôr à prova as suas capacidades de observação e dedução.
The post Case Solved: The London Files desafia-o a pensar como um detetive para desvendar uma série de mistérios appeared first on Tek Notícias.
Apple may be moving faster than expected in its modem development work, and Qualcomm’s latest comments suggest that shift is already reshaping the iPhone supply chain.
Qualcomm overnight said supply constraints are shrinking some of its Apple business faster than anticipated. “It’s availability of supply,” CEO Cristiano Amon told Reuters.
While he wasn’t specific, that likely reflects the broader industry shortage in memory, storage, and everything else and means the company’s share of components used for the next iPhone launch will fall “well below” its anticipated estimates. Amon says this is part of a transition in which future Qualcomm income will be generated by AI datacenter demand.
The company also intends to boost modem prices on Sept. 1 (And remember, the patent licensing agreement between Apple and Qualcomm expires in March 2027.)
Given Apple is selling plenty of smartphones (even as the broader industry shrinks), supply constraints won’t necessarily be because of demand for the devices; this could reflect Apple’s plan to divide the iPhone release schedule across several months, as well as its future modem development efforts.
Reports for months have indicated Apple plans to introduce new iPhones twice a year, with the Pro range updated each fall and entry-level devices scheduled for spring. It’s a move that’s likely to help build more consistent quarterly earnings by spreading demand across different parts of the year and could reduce short-term demand for components.
Things look a little different this year, of course; the expected introduction of the new iPhone Ultra means Apple will be making three new iPhone models, not the customary four – though there is also speculation the Ultra may not ship in quantity until later on this year.
There’s also Apple’s own modem development plans to consider. We know Apple’s relationship with Qualcomm isn’t easy. The two firms were engaged in costly litigation before they found a way to bury the hatchet and work together on 5G iPhones while Apple developed its C-series modems.
Those C-series modems are already used in Apple devices. The iPhone 16e, 17e and iPhone Air carry Apple’s C1/C1X modem, with the C2 variant expected in the 18 Pro series this year.
Apple’s new modem is expected to deliver better battery efficiency, improved cellular network privacy, and AI-supported network efficiency. So, your device should last longer, be less visible to your carrier, and better able to get a connection — even when connectivity is constrained.
Next year’s 18-series devices will certainly stick with Apple’s modems, meaning Qualcomm’s remaining Apple business should be wrapped up in the release this fall. As Apple’s modem appears in more devices, you’ll probably only see Qualcomm modems used to provide mmWave support, which realistically has very little traction or carrier support outside America.
That view is supported by reports based on information recently stolen from Apple’s India-based iPhone partner, Tata. It claimed Apple will use the C2 in internationally sold iPhones Pro and Max, while keeping to Qualcomm in US devices.
If Apple takes the same approach with next year’s iPhone releases, it would mean only US iPhones — and probably not all of them — have mmWave. As a result, Qualcomm’s modems will only be available in a very small subset of iPhones sold. That would almost certainly account for the modem maker’s reduced Apple optimism. (Apple is also part of the 6G standard development group, which implies it hopes to find some way to replace mmWave.)
It also indicates Apple is less likely to renew its current patent licensing deal, though it could still require some licenses since Qualcomm’s SEPs include some 5G-essential technologies. The other takeaway here: Apple has a high degree of confidence in its forthcoming C2 modem, which makes sense given how well-received its C1 modem has been.
One more thought. It is interesting the extent to which Tim Cook’s Apple seems to be finalizing much of its business before the transition to new CEO John Ternus on Sept. 1. (It is also notable that Qualcomm also intends to raise its prices on the same date.)
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All right, quiz time: In a single sentence, can you tell me exactly what Google Voice does?
It’s a question even the most giddy Google-appreciating geeks struggle to answer succinctly — and for normal, non-tech-obsessed Homo sapiens, the answer typically falls somewhere between “Huh?” and “Wait, is that the same thing as gChat?”
Really, it’s no surprise. Google Voice is one of Google’s most complex, confusing, and poorly promoted services. But it’s also one of its most powerful — if you take the time to figure out exactly what it does and how it can work for you.
And especially if you’re using your phone for any manner of business, it can make a night-and-day difference in your ability to stay as connected and productive as possible, no matter where you’re working or what type of device you’re using at any given moment. Without exaggeration, it’ll completely change the way you think about your modern mobile devices and what a phone number even is.
Consider this your unofficial guide to getting started with Google Voice and then getting the most out of the underappreciated but potential-packed service.
We’ll start with the basics — and go back to that question I posed at the beginning of this conversation: What exactly is Google Voice?
In its simplest form, Google Voice is a cloud-based service that manages your phone number for you. Instead of being connected to a SIM card (or eSIM) and tied specifically to a single physical smartphone, your number lives in a fluffy Google server and is controlled entirely by Google software.
That arrangement ultimately frees your digits from their traditional shackles and allows you to communicate in all sorts of convenient, efficiency-enhancing ways — without any complex carrier-switching or awkward add-ons required.
At its core, that empowers you to:
Together, that means any phone, tablet, or computer where you sign into Google Voice effectively becomes “your phone” — regardless of what type of connection it relies on or if it even has active cellular service.
So, for instance, you could:
And there’s more: Google Voice also automatically transcribes your voicemails and lets you listen to or read ’em from any device where you’re signed in. It brings Google-caliber spam filtering to your incoming calls, text messages, and voicemails, along with the option to have all of your calls screened for you. And it gives you a robust system of contextual call forwarding — almost like Gmail filters for your phone.
Like I said, this is one seriously powerful but also confoundingly complicated service. Let’s dive in and explore every last piece of the puzzle so you can make sure you’re taking full advantage of everything it has to offer.
The first step to getting started with Google Voice is simply signing into the service and setting yourself up with a number. That part of the process is easiest if you begin on a computer.
For individual, non-company-connected Google accounts, Voice plans range from free to $20 a month for different sets of features. You can immediately choose a new Google Voice number in any available area code for free, or you can opt to pay $20 to transfer an existing number into the service. In either scenario, you’ll have to be in the US to be eligible. (Sorry, international pals!)
With company-connected Google Workspace accounts, Voice is available in the US as well as in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. Your Workspace administrator will have to activate the service for you, and it costs $10, $20, or $30 per user per month — billed to the company — depending on what tier of service is selected.
Either way, once you’ve got your number set, you’ll find yourself facing the main Google Voice dashboard. That’s where you’ll always be able to see your recent calls and messages, make new calls and messages, and read or listen to voicemails left on your number.
The Google Voice dashboard lets you manage everything related to your calls and messages from any device where you’re signed in.
JR Raphael / Foundry
And as long as you have the website open, any calls coming into your number will actually ring your computer — and you can answer ’em right then and there.
Incoming calls can be answered on any device where you’re signed into Google Voice — including a computer.
JR Raphael / Foundry
We’ll come back to explore some advanced settings in a second. First, we need to shift our focus for a moment and get Google Voice set up on any phones where you want to use it — including the primary phone you rely on for your day-to-day communication.
Now that we’ve got the core Voice setup finished, this part’s pretty easy:
Either way, open the app up and follow the prompts to sign in using the same Google account you used in your initial setup on your computer.
On Android, you’ll be prompted to connect that device to Google Voice to allow the phone to make and receive calls using your Google Voice number. If your phone has active cellular service with a separate number that’s connected to your carrier, follow the steps to link the two and allow them to work together.
If you’re using an older or secondary phone that doesn’t have active cellular service, just skip that step. You’ll still be able to make and receive calls with your Google Voice number whenever the phone’s connected to Wi-Fi.
On both Android and iOS, you’ll then see the main Google Voice dashboard interface — with tabs for your recent calls, your contacts, your text messages, and your voicemails. The button in the lower-right corner of the screen will allow you to make a new call or start a new message, depending on which tab you’re viewing.
The Google Voice mobile apps effectively transform any smartphone into your Google Voice device.
JR Raphael / Foundry
And on both platforms, you’ll be able to tap the three-line menu icon in the app’s upper-left corner to find the main settings menu.
In a moment we’ll explore the main Voice settings thoroughly from the service’s website, where every last option is available, but for now, take a quick peek at the “Making and receiving calls” (or “Make and receive calls”) and “Incoming calls” areas of the apps’ settings. Those will control exactly how calls to and from your Voice number will be handled on that specific device — if they’ll rely on your carrier-provided cellular minutes, assuming those are available, or if they’ll rely primarily on Wi-Fi and/or mobile data.
If you have any other phones or any tablets you want to add into the mix and allow to access all of the same Google Voice functions, repeat this same process on any of them, using the appropriate Android or iOS app.
Just remember: If you set up all those devices to answer calls, you’re gonna have an awful lot of things ringing every time someone dials your digits. So if you don’t want a bunch of different devices simultaneously demanding your attention with every incoming call, be sure to go into the Google Voice app’s notification settings on each device and make the appropriate adjustments.
Otherwise, we’re ready to move back to your computer to dive in deep to all of the Google Voice settings.
All right — ready to get into some of Google Voice’s greatest powers?
Back on the Voice desktop website, click the gear-shaped icon in the upper-right corner of the screen. That’ll take you to the full Google Voice settings menu, where you’ll find every available option.
And my goodness, are there a lot of ’em.
The first section of the screen, “Account,” has all of your basic number and device management settings, for anytime you need to make any foundational changes. The only item there you need to think about right now is “Linked numbers.” If you want to set your Google Voice number up to forward to any other existing numbers — an office line, a secondary cell phone, or even a colleague’s phone — click the “New linked number” button and follow the steps to add and confirm the number you need.
Linking a new number to your Google Voice account for forwarding is as simple as adding the number into the Voice website and then confirming it.
JR Raphael / Foundry
Moving on, the second section of the screen, “Messages,” contains a single switch to have any incoming messages forwarded to your email (in the same Google account’s inbox). It’s a simple touch but a useful one, especially if you live in your inbox and want to make sure you don’t miss anything during the day.
The third section, “Calls,” is where the real Google Voice power starts coming into play. Under “Call forwarding,” you’ll be able to flip a switch next to any linked number you added to have all incoming calls on your Google Voice number forward to it all the time.
And directly beneath that, the “Custom call forwarding” section will let you set up contextual filters to forward only specific sorts of calls to different linked numbers. Simply click “Create a rule,” and you’ll be able to choose individual contacts, groups of contacts, or broad categories of contacts like anonymous callers and then tell Google Voice exactly what to do when those people ring you.
Google Voice’s rules are like Gmail filters for your incoming calls.
JR Raphael / Foundry
Back on the main Google Voice settings screen, the “Calls” section has some other options worth your while to consider:
Skip down from there to “Voicemail,” and you’ll find options to record your outgoing voicemail message and manage other voicemail-related preferences.
Under “Payments,” you can connect a payment method to apply credit for international calls, if you’re so inclined. In the US, calls made through Google Voice to other US numbers as well as Canadian numbers are completely free, while calls to other countries vary in their rates.
And last but not least, under “Security,” you’ll probably want to flip the switch next to “Filter spam calls and texts.” That’ll allow Google’s spam detection systems to stop suspected junk calls, messages, and voicemails from ever bothering you.
Whew! Told ya Google Voice had lots of fascinating layers, didn’t I? Hold the phone, though: We’ve got one more pair of powerful possibilities to explore before we call it a day.
Some of Google Voice’s most useful features are available only for higher-level individual and business accounts.
For accounts using either the Google Voice Standard individual plan ($20 per month) or the Google Voice Standard or Premier team plans ($20 or $30 per user per month), you can dial into a couple of advanced business-oriented phone management options:
Those same team plans (but notably not the individual plan) can also create ring groups that make it easy for multiple people to handle calls coming into the same number — like a single streamlined number for a sales team, for instance. The main number can either ring every associated team member’s phone at the same time so whoever answers first gets the call, or it can ring all of the associated numbers individually in a random order. Those plans include advanced Voice-associated data searching capabilities as well, and at the Premier level, there’s also the option to automatically record and transcribe calls without any manual action required.
All of those features can be configured by your Google Workspace administrator in the Google Voice section of the Google Admin console.
Oh, and one more thing: Any Google Voice number can connect directly to a variety of specialty boxes and handsets that effectively allow you to have subscription-free landline-style phones for your desk or home office. You can establish a standalone number through Google Voice for such a line and even have calls from your other Google Voice numbers automatically ring those phones in addition to ringing other devices, so you can easily answer any call anywhere you like.
And now you know, from start to finish, how Google Voice can transform your business and the very way you think about your phones. All that’s left is to create your account, get things set up the way you want, and then enjoy your newly enlightened approach to phone number management.
This article was originally published in June 2022 and updated in July 2026.
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