It’s different on different phones, I just figured that was the easiest. Some have discrete buttons, some have a slider that goes in multiple directions, some have two slides etc. I’ve also seen it called Ignore and Decline and they’re likely other names as well.
I just figured green is for picking up and red was for ignoring would be the quickest way to explain it.
On my phone, there’s even a setting to shut the phone up (I think it’s for not just ringing but various other alerts as well) by placing your hand over it.
I haven’t used that one yet, it seems like a good way to dismiss things that I don’t want to dismiss.
It’s called “turning the sound, and vibrate, off, and looking at the screen to see who’s called” and has been my go-to phone setting for over 5 years now.
If my mom or my wife call me, I’ll answer. Everyone else gets ignored. But if you leave a message I may call you back if I feel like it. Honestly you’d save time to just text.
When I was training, I routinely went 36+ hours without sleep so the last thing I wanted when I finally got to go to bed was a ringing phone. I learned that if you unscrewed the earpiece from the phone the speaker would just fall out (i.e. no wires to disconnect). I could then leave the phone off the hook as long as I wanted without any loud clicks/sounds/howls to ‘remind’ me to hang the phone back up.
You could accomplish that by disconnecting the handset from the base as well.
I’m kind of surprised that in all these years no one came up with a simple device that you could plug into a phone jack with a switch that would simulate it being off the hook.
I don’t even recall (residential) phones having some type of Do Not Disturb buttons that would do the same thing, make the phone act like it’s off the hook but without the noise.
A downside to the whole ignoring thing is that you know that I know that you called, and if I don’t call call you back, or text you or something, you can be upset about being ghosted (and you’re probably within your rights to be so).
Not joking. I didn’t know a red X meant “ignore call and send to voicemail.” If only there were some method of visual communication to inform the user of its purpose… like the clever runes I’m using now. All I knew was that pressing it made the phone quiet.
This is the one feature that I cared about when iOS 13 came out. Couldn’t care less about all of the other stuff they added.
It’s sure sweet to look at my phone after a long day and see that four or five bogus calls had been silently ignored, with a couple of them repeated and ignored a second time.
And yes, when one of the actually leaves a message I use the speech to text feature to immediately dismiss the “blah blah about your student loan blah blah” stuff that often is left.
If they’re in my contact list, I’ll answer the call if I’m available.* Every other number gets declined and sent to voicemail for later filtering.
*If it’s immediate family, I’ll answer no matter what or drop everything to call back immediately if I missed the call. All of us loathe the phone and are strictly a text-and-email family. If one of them is calling me, something is urgently wrong.
My Pixel 3XL has a button that screens calls. It plays a message that I’m using a call screening app and tells them to say their name and reason for calling. If someone is calling for a legit reason i can read their response and answer it if it is legit. Otherwise, I add it to my spam blacklist.
On my cell phone, I never answer it if the caller isn’t listed on my caller ID. If the call is important they’ll leave a v/m. If they can’t be bothered then it can’t be important, at least IMHO.
On the land line we have one call number blocked. Otherwise we use the cell phone rule.
On my cell phone, I never answer it if the caller isn’t listed on my caller ID. If the call is important they’ll leave a v/m. If they can’t be bothered then it can’t be important, at least IMHO.
On the land line we have one call number blocked. Otherwise we use the cell phone rule.