I’m jealous of this Pixel calling feature that saves hours of phone call frustration

I am the same way in Zoom rooms or Google Meet rooms as well.

I can’t explain why I feel this way, but I do. And that feeling makes me procrastinate on important phone calls.

I still make myself do it, but I strongly dislike it, especially when the calls leave me on hold for 30 minutes or more before someone picks up.

And once, one of my friends asked me why I didn’t just let my digital assistant take calls for me instead of dealing with this pressure.

It turns out he owns a Google Pixel 10 — a vastly different experience from my primary driver, a Samsung Galaxy S25+.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t have the same perks as him, particularly the Google Pixel “Hold for Me” feature.

Pixel’s Hold for Me would have saved me a lot of stress

The digital assistant takes over for you

Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police | voronaman / Shutterstock

The Hold for Me feature is Pixel-exclusive. Even though I own a Google Pixel 8 as a secondary device, there is no way I am swapping my SIM card from my Galaxy S25+.

I am too deeply embedded in the Samsung ecosystem to make a comfortable swap.

But it doesn’t mean I can’t want these features — like Hold for Me — just as other Samsung users do.

How Hold for Me works is that while you are waiting for a call, the digital assistant can listen in until the caller gets on the line, then notify you that the person of interest is ready.

It just requires you to open your Phone settings once to enableit: find the Call Assist menu, tap Hold for Me, then toggle it on.

The feature appears when you open the Call Assist option during a call. You tap it, and the digital assistant will listen in on the call for you.

When someone picks up, the assistant will alert you that another person is on the line.

Basically, it bypasses the need to wait, so you can set your phone down next to whatever you are doing, then pick it back up when prompted.

For me, this would do wonders for my anxiety, since I can keep myself busy with another task. And since I am a writer, what better way to keep busy than by drafting, editing, or researching on my laptop while I am put on hold?

The Bixby text call option is not enough

Samsung really needs its own Hold for Me feature

Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police

Since I really wanted a feature like Hold for Me, I was hoping to find something that works with Bixby.

I checked out the Bixby text call option, and sadly, I was disappointed.

What this does is have Bixby speak the text response aloud to the caller for you after you’ve entered it.

It can technically stay on the line for you, but again, it won’t alert you when a human answers the phone.

You can also have it screen calls for you, so if someone calling you is a spammer, the assistant will pick it up and ask them to state their name and purpose for calling, and all that information is transcribed in real time for you.

While I think these are useful features, they don’t really help me manage my anxiety about the wait time for outgoing calls.

It seems this is another feature meant for Pixel phones, which makes me consider switching.

Then reality hits: I’m too deeply invested in the Samsung ecosystem, and there are too many customization features tied to Good Lock that I’d desperately miss if I swapped.

Samsung needs to step up its calling game

While I like the current options incorporated into Samsung’s Phone app, I still want more.

Transcriptions have been great, and the block caller filtering has saved my sanity on more than one occasion (I used to get five spam calls a day), but I still have to actively manage it.

But I am still not in love with how Bixby is integrated, mainly because it is a lot more focused on call management.

After reviewing what Pixel has available in its Call Assist menu, I wish Samsung would take a bit more of an automated approach, so I can think less on the spot on how to handle specific callers.

But at the very least, Samsung’s call recording feature is a nifty tool to review details I may have missed while I was on the phone.

SoC

Google Tensor G5

Display type

Actua display

Display dimensions

6.3 inches

Display resolution

20:9

RAM

12GB

Storage

128GB / 256GB

This striking-looking addition to the Pixel line offers a slew of Gemini features, an 5x telephoto lens, and seven years of updates, making this a smartphone that will last you a while.