Google Phone starts rolling out ‘Audio Emoji’ and they’re really weird [Video]

The Google Phone app is picking up a new trick, with the app now rolling out “Audio Emoji” to some users.

“Audio Emoji” in the Google Phone app are essentially stock sound effects attached to one of six different emoji. The list includes:

• Clapping (Applause)
• Laughing
• Party
• Crying (Trombone)
• Poop
• Sting (Ba Dum Tss)

When you, as the caller, select one of these “Audio Emoji,” the Google Phone app will play a fun animation while a sound effect plays for a couple of seconds. The sound effect is heard on both ends of the phone call.

Google, in the Phone app’s settings, explains the feature saying:

Express emotions and moods with sounds like applause, laughter, sad trombone, and more with tappable emoji while you’re in a call.

There does seem to be a limit on how often you can use these sound effects, as there’s a bit of a “cooldown” in between that prevents you from playing sounds back to back. That’s probably for the best in the case of some of these.

Accessing Audio Emoji is available in two ways, currently. There’s a button for it in the overflow menu, but there’s also a chip that appears in the main calling interface. It’s unclear why there are two means of access. There’s also a setting to disable the feature entirely.

Audio Emoji is rolling out via the latest Google Phone update in the beta channel, version 128. It will likely launch for all users in the weeks to come.

9to5Google’s Take

This seems… dumb? At the very least there’s no obvious use case for this besides the “Sting” being potentially pretty funny. It could be argued there’s a way to implement a feature like this where it’s fun and useful, but the fact that one of the included sound effects is a fart just kills that entirely.

I’m sure someone out there will have a lot of fun with this, but I just can’t imagine Google’s motivation on this one.

What do you think?

Thanks Jeffrey!

More on Google Phone:

• Google Phone app removes Nearby places search
• Phone app starts showing WhatsApp calls, new video call shortcut for some
• Google Phone app removing Nearby Places, teases more Pixel call AI in 2024

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