Conference Calls on Android

How to make calls to more than one person at once on your Android smartphone? Sometimes it’s a lot easier to make one call than it is to make three. If you’ve got big news to tell a lot of people, or some work you need to discuss with colleagues then making a conference call is going to be much simpler than repeating yourself over and over again. Luckily, your Android phone is more than capable of handling conference calls, so you’re already well equipped to get the word out. In this tutorial we’ll show you how it’s done. Bear in mind conference calling can vary from phone to phone.

This is how it works on a Samsung Galaxy S III, and while it’ll be pretty similar on other phones, you might need to change round some of the steps to make sure everything works the way it should. Please note that your network must allow the feature as well. With that in mind, let’s start the phone call ball rolling and move on to step one.

Make sure you can
It’s worth checking before you try to make a call that your network allows you to conference call. Some will disable the feature and have their own way of doing things instead. A quick Google search should tell you whether or not your carrier allows conference calls.

Call the first number
To get started you must fi rst call one of the people that you would like to add to the call. Do this in the normal way, either using the contact details that are stored in your phone, or by typing in a number using the keypad and pressing the green call button at the bottom.

Wait for a reply
You’ll now have to wait until the person you’re calling answers. Unfortunately you can’t add people into calls until you’ve got at least one person connected. Once they answer you can go straight on to step 4. If they don’t, you’ll need to call someone else.

Add another caller
Once the fi rst person has answered you’ll see that the Add call button isn’t greyed out any more. Tap on that and then choose the next person you want to add, again using either their details from your phone’s Contacts application or by typing in their number.

Wait a bit more
You’re now going to have to wait while the next person answers this new phone call. Your fi rst contact will be put on hold while this second caller is being connected, so you don’t need to worry too much about them for now – you’re only dealing with one caller at a time.

Merge the calls
Now the moment of truth. Once the second person has answered, tap Merge and the two calls should join and your conference call is in full fl ow. You can now repeat the process if you want to add more people by tapping Add call again. The number of callers will be limited by your network.

Source.Android Magazine UK Issue.21.2013