Microsoft Teams turns your phone into a walkie-talkie

One of the hallmarks of Boost Mobile’s prepaid phones in the early 2000s was their push-to-talk (PTT) or walkie-talkie feature, which allowed you to play your voice through another Boost Mobile user’s phone speaker at the touch of a button. button. Microsoft is now offering a similar feature for iOS and Android devices through its Teams app. However, Microsoft doesn’t use rappers and athletes to make PTT “cool”like Boost Mobile did. Instead, the company is positioning the feature as a way to use technology to help frontline workers.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Emma Williams, Microsoft’s corporate VP of Modern Work Transformation, announced that Teams’ walkie-talkie capability is now available “on all iOS mobile devices, such as iPhone and iPad, in addition to Android mobile devices.”

Williams also said the feature will be coming to some Zebra Technologies devices, such as rugged phones or scanners. Such products may even have a button that you can press to connect instantly, like real walkie-talkies and old PTT Boost Mobile phones.

The number of frontline workers using Teams grew 400 percent from March to November last year, Williams said. The porting of Walkie Talkie for Teams to mobile devices aims to address the challenges frontline workers face due to labor shortages and supply chain issues by providing “technology that saves them time, helps them communicate more seamlessly, and maximizes their productivity.” efficiency in performing repetitive tasks,” writes Williams.

The walkie-talkie feature is one of Microsoft’s ways to make Teams stand out in a workplace filled with competing apps like Slack and Zoom by highlighting quick voice communications on the go. Slack is basically a text chat, but its Huddle feature allows you to quickly chat with colleagues. Meanwhile, Zoom’s idea of ​​PTT is to let you quickly unmute.

Walkie-talkie functions are also available in some other modern mobile devices. As 9to5Mac points out, Apple introduced an app with this functionality for the Apple Watch back in 2018.

But while Microsoft markets Walkie Talkie for Teams as a work tool, there’s nothing stopping you from using it to yell “where are you?”to a friend in a friendly way.