Smartphones are increasingly becoming our AI-powered assistants, but the quality of their voice calls has changed little in recent years. Well, Nokia wants to fix that – and claims to have created the world’s first immersive voice and audio call using a new codec.
The phone call was made using a new IVAS (Immersive Voice and Audio Services) codec, which is part of the upcoming ‘5G Advanced’ standard. According to Nokia’s blog postthe codec creates a ‘three-dimensional sound experience’ that makes chats feel ‘more lifelike and engaging’.
In theory, it should be a major upgrade over today’s compressed, monophonic phone calls, which haven’t improved much over the years despite the introduction of software-based features like Voice Isolation.
So, when could the rest of us get this voice calling upgrade? There is good news and bad news. According to ReutersThe technology only needs a smartphone to have at least two microphones to be compatible, and that’s the case with most of today’s best phones.
Unfortunately, the 5G Advanced standard – which is expected to be the successor to the current 5G mobile technology – is not expected to be. fully rolled out in several yearsand the IVAS codec is not yet used by any mobile network.
Still, this first so-called “immersive” phone call should get the ball rolling on the licensing deals needed to make our phone calls sound a little less muddy and ready for “enhanced extended reality and metaverse applications” that Nokia says it has. his eye on.
Nokia and its 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) partners, who co-developed the new IVAS codec, clearly do not foresee it being limited to smartphones and audio calls.
On the 3GPP siteSome of the use cases include “multi-stream teleconferencing, XR conversation services, and user-generated live and pre-produced content streaming,” in addition to more conversational phone calls. It also sees “corresponding applications in the AR/MR space.”
In other words, this is about taking voice calls (and conference calls) into a more spatial, realistic future where it actually feels like we’re in the presence of other people, rather than talking to them through a compressed format from bygone times. .
It will be a few years before the IVAS codec is licensed and fully adopted by mobile carriers, but by then we should have a more fully developed mixed-reality space thanks to the arrival of more headsets in the Apple line Vision Pro and Samsung XR/VR headset, plus some associated apps.
But an improvement in call quality on our phones, which can still vary wildly between apps, would certainly be a very nice bonus.