I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I'm going to give it a shot anyways. I've been paralyzed from the chest down for over 23 years and until this past weekend I had never owned a cell phone. I've been using NaturallySpeaking on a PC almost the entire 23 years. For about the last 15 years I've worked from home and used a Skype in/out account to make phone calls. I had seen about a year ago that Apple updated their accessibility features, and the guy in the ad touting new voice control features look to be paralyzed about the same level as me.

 

I'm rambling… Bottom line is I now have a new iPhone 12 on a deal that was just too good to pass up. I'm pretty impressed with the voice commands on it except for one big problem. There is no way to hang up a phone call by voice. I spoke with a lady in the Apple accessibility support department last night and this isn't some oversight. I'm told the microphone on the iPhones cannot be shared between apps. When you initiate or pick up a call on the iPhone it turns off the voice control & Siri until the call ends. This is obviously a problem for somebody trying to operate the phone hands-free.

 

At this point I can still return the phone and get something else if necessary. I may not get a deal like I did on this iPhone 12, but it's the voice plan that is the real bargain for me. Not being able to hang up on a voicemail message and/or always reminding the other person to please be sure to hang up a call is far from ideal.

 

I'm sure others here must have run into this same problem. I would really appreciate hearing how others have dealt with this, or if anybody has any ideas.

 

Thanks,

Chad

We understand Apple reasoning but have you considered a Bluetooth headset? We control music playback, volume, selection, taking a call, and disconnecting with our Sennheiser Momentum (earplugs)

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Thaanks for the reply Lunis. When you say "disconnecting" do you mean disconnecting the Bluetoooth? My biggest concern with being able to hang up a phone call is that I'm going to get stuck on people's voicemail. I see from the description on Amazon For the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2 - Bluetooth in-Ear Bud that they talk about being able to do many things hands-free. In your experience does that include picking up phone calls and hanging up on calls?

 

I would love to find a wireless headset, earphones, microphone, or whatever that can cover all my bases between dictating to my PC, Skype calls on that PC, and/or voice commands and calls on my iPhone.

 

Thanks,

Chad

We were referring to hanging up on a cell phone call rather than disconnecting your Bluetooth.

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So, my first post. I saw this thread not long after it went up and also lamented that I couldn't terminate an iPhone call with my voice. Not long after that, Alexa informed me that I could now make calls on my service through her. That she (?) Informed me that on her own I found mildly disturbing but I figured I would test it out sometimes just to check. About a week later, my iPhone (an SE 2nd gen, DNS crashed at this point) had gotten turned over which apparently keeps the microphone from working, since I needed to make a call (I have a severe disability and couldn't turn the SP over) I tried Alexa and was able to make a call from my contacts list just as I would using Siri, though without the "Hey". I found that I could also dictate a number into Alexa. Not too long after that, and I must say the delay in doing the testing was that I had been habituated to how Apple had set up its program for my iPhone, I for some reason decided to tell Alexa to "cancel" a call after I dictated a message into a answering machine. And, it worked! I was somewhat stunned, so I tested it a few more times and it worked each time, so, thank you Jeff Bezos.

Perhaps, the biggest difference between using the iPhone versus an echo dot, is that ED picks up a lot more background then the iPhone, but that is something that the target of the call must contend with, and I'm comfortable with that.