Today while livecoding in lecture, my prof got a call that got shown on his Mac. His response to that was very interesting:
“Has anyone else noticed that phones have gotten so advanced that when we receive a phone call we treat it almost like a DOS attack? It impairs is from doing everything that’s secondary to making and taking phone calls and that pisses us off”

Dev shower thoughts

Since call notification on Mac takes interface focus, it really can be annoying - you’re typing code and... BAM! Incoming call and you’re typing in call notification ;)

It’s because phones still handle calls in a really dumb and obtrusive way.

When we’re so used to being able to do other things and jump around the OS, the last thing we’re expecting is a whole lotta noise and essentially a full screen pop up.

It’s also such an attention breaker, I think if calls became more asynchronous and came in like text messages (though with a bit more fanfare), that would be good.

Someone sends a call request.
That remains active until they cancel it, could even be rolled into the messages UI.
You receive said request.
Accept / decline at your own leisure.
Acceptance while still active opens the channel, brings up a call UI and notification for caller, full completion then results in the original call experience.

Seems complicated, but it’s just a new flow to get used to.

Most of our digital interactions are asynchronous nowadays, phone calls should be the same.

Of course though, this doesn’t answer concerns around when people need to reach you, but we coped in the era of the landline and before then, so mostly a non-issue.

Could always have a VIP list of contacts that come straight through ala do not disturb.

Would also need to balance things like companies calling, but maybe not having an instant comms channel to consumers would be a good thing.

On my Android calls appear as a station notification with options to answer or decline when I'm using the phone, but it rings normally and full screen when it's locked. Never noticed it until now but I really appreciate the convenience.

I use the game mode on my note 8 for a lot of apps (can manually add non games)

Phone calls appear as a 100px by 20px oval with the name of the caller and 2 1px arrows pointing out that I can swipe down to answer.

It then answers if I swipe in the notification window with a speakerphone button right there so it never takes focus away from the app.

Very good UI design IMHO