Call recording can go back to Android. Is this function legal in Poland?

Call recording disappeared from pure Android somehow around Android Marshmallow. In the vicinity of Android 9, the official Google APK has also disappeared, enabling call recording by independent applications. Since then, recording was only possible on the phones of those manufacturers who provided their own Phone app and their own recording solution.

This was the case, for example, in Xiaomi, but it will no longer be. Xiaomi phones, which will go to international distribution and in the European Union, will no longer be delivered with the Contacts and dialer and SMS applications, but will be replaced by Google's Phone and Messages.

Thus, the call recording function will also disappear from Xiaomi smartphones, which is understandable - in many countries, call recording is not legal, so the manufacturer makes his life easier by removing this function from all distributions of his system.

Google wants to restore Android call recording?

Although it was Google that deprived us of the ability to record Android calls, there are many indications that Google will now restore it.

Users of the XDA Developers forum noticed traces of the return of the recording function in the new version of the Phone application.

It is not known whether the function is created for Pixels and smartphones from the Android One family, or for an application available to everyone in the Play Store. For now, it is only known that in the new version of the application there is a recording icon that appears on the screen during the conversation.

It is also not known how much truth is in these reports, or how long it will take Google to release the application with the new feature. After all, we know that Google is working on restoring the API for recording calls since April 2019, when a Google representative officially wrote on the forum that the company will be working on this feature, although it certainly will not appear in Android Q which eventually came to the market as Android 10.

Recording calls on the phone - is it even legal in Poland?

I asked Jakub Kralka, a lawyer and creator of our sister website Bezprawnik, whether Poles have anything to wait for.

Jakub explains the issue of recording in this way:

Views on this matter are divided, but in my opinion just recording the conversation in which we participate is legal. The problem arises only when we want to use such a conversation in some way - publish it on the web, play it back to a friend or use it as evidence in court.

Although some lawyers are more radical in this matter, I do not see an obvious contradiction to the law in recording, for example, a conversation with a colleague who gives us a list of tasks to be performed, and we want to remember everything well.

A more detailed discussion of the case can be found in a dedicated article on Bezprawnik.pl.

Such an approach to the subject in Polish law makes it worth waiting for the function to return. For example, when running a service activity, we can record conversations with clients so that they cannot accuse us of not explaining something to them. Journalists, on the other hand, could easily record telephone interviews using the built-in application, and not as today - completely on board, because it is impossible otherwise.

We do not know when and if Google will restore the recording function at all. However, we know that if it ever happens, we will be able to use this function in the majesty of the law. Of course… within common sense.