I ranked the best iOS 17 features, from most useful to outright gimmick

For those who prefer to send messages rather than make calls, this one is for you. (But also, live voicemail is great for people who don’t have the patience with anonymous callers or “waiting for the next available colleague”.)

Like Google’s Call Screen feature and Samsung’s Bixby text call, Live Voicemail transcribes the incoming caller’s message for you so you can read the message before picking up or placing the call.

Too, iPhone jealous? These 3 iOS 17 features have Android alternatives

I recently canceled my auto insurance plan, and the number of cold calls I was getting from competing services was out of my range. That’s when live voicemail came in handy. Instead of picking up every call, I simply toggled on the feature, let the iPhone transcribe callers, and picked up when there was a worthwhile offer on the table.

That said, there is one caveat to using live voicemail and that is the fact that not everyone is as receptive to talking to an automated voice bot. When you activate the feature, a chatbot communicates with the caller and informs them that you are not available to take the call at that time. In most cases, callers put the message on hold for a second or two. To be fair, I would have done the same thing if I hadn’t heard a real person voicing it.