In the recent Windows 11 22H2 release Microsoft deprecated a number of APIs used for making phone calls. Previously Thy Phone had used these because they presented a standard Windows dialog for call handling (incoming and outgoing) and the experience was consistent with Your Phone / Phone Link.
The reason for removing these was given as an opportunity for differentiating apps by providing a custom UI. So rather than having the option of taking either approach and choosing to keep a consistent experience with Android calling, I’ve had to re-invent the wheel and create a new call progress dialog and notifications for incoming calls.
This week’s new release of Thy Phone 1.27 features these changes and ensures the app continues to work on Microsoft’s latest OS versions. v1.25 will be the last release for Windows 10 as I just can’t spread my limited time and energy across multiple versions of the app.
You’ll get a toast notification with answer/reject buttons when there is an incoming call. This is as close as possible to the Phone Link behaviour. For an in-progress call I’ve created a new dialog which displays the caller name/number, call duration and buttons to toggle mute, switch audio to the phone or hang up the call. In a future release I will add an in-call keypad and possibly the ability to put calls on hold and switch between them to restore feature parity with Windows 10. It didn’t make it into this release because of the work involved and the need to get an update out quickly to unblock the app with the basic calling functionality.
I’m hoping that something positive can come out of this, and am looking at how to make some of this re-usable with a 32feet library for Bluetooth Handsfree calling. Both Windows and macOS have APIs for this so it would be good to provide a consistent cross-platform API around the functionality.
In The Hand Ltd 