Google Phone’s Expressive Calling allows urgent calls to override Do Not Disturb

Google is rolling out an exciting new feature aimed at enhancing communication through its Phone and Gemini applications. Known as Expressive Calling, this feature is designed to make important calls stand out with the help of visual indicators and haptic feedback, creating a more immediate sense of urgency. Currently being tested by select users in the Phone by Google beta program, Expressive Calling can be accessed by navigating to Phone Settings, selecting General, and scrolling down to the Expressive Calling option. The primary feature, which adds visual and vibration effects to calls, is enabled by default. Additionally, there is a setting allowing urgent calls to bypass the Do Not Disturb mode, ensuring that critical communications are not missed. At this stage, the Expressive Calling feature functions only when both the caller and recipient are using the beta version of Phone by Google, specifically version 203. When making a call, users will be prompted to designate it as urgent. If chosen, the recipient will receive a notification indicating “It’s urgent!” on their incoming call screen, accompanied by an animated siren emoji. If the call is missed, it will be marked as urgent in the call history, making it easier to identify significant missed calls. In addition to Expressive Calling, Google recently unveiled its Gemini 3 Deep Think, incorporated into the Gemini app. This new reasoning mode is available to subscribers of the Google AI Ultra plan and is touted as the company's most sophisticated AI thinking capability to date. Targeted at users engaging with complex tasks in mathematics, science, and logical reasoning, Deep Think enhances the AI's ability to solve challenging problems by conducting multiple lines of reasoning simultaneously. Google claims that this parallel processing approach allows the AI to delve deeper into potential solutions, achieving impressive results on demanding benchmarks. For example, it scored 41.0% on Humanity's Last Exam and 45.1% on the ARC-AGI-2 test with code execution enabled. These achievements, highlighted in an official Google blog post, are said to establish a new standard for AI-driven reasoning.