How a pocket AI recorder helps me with French phone calls and research

I’ve lived in Nice since 2014 and I speak French every day. Still, on the phone, I miss things. The other person talks fast, the line crackles, and a date, a price or a name slips past me. A small recorder on the back of my phone has fixed that. After the call I have the whole conversation written down, with a short summary in my own language.

What it is

Pocket is a flat voice recorder about the size of a credit card. It snaps onto the back of a phone with MagSafe (there is an adhesive mount for other phones). You press the side button to start recording and press it again to stop. It doesn’t listen all the time.

Besides the usual microphones it has a contact microphone that picks up phone calls through the back of the phone, so you don’t need to put the call on speaker. Recordings are stored on the device and sync to the app on your phone, where you get the transcript and a summary.

Phone calls in French

This is what I use it for most. A call to the town hall, a garage, a doctor’s office, a landlord or a hotel: in French, often fast, sometimes with a strong southern accent.

Before, I took notes during the call and still missed something. Then I called back, or wrote an email to confirm. Now I can listen. After the call I open the app and see:

• the full transcript in French, so I can check the exact words,
• a summary in my own language, with dates, prices, addresses and what we agreed,
• a list of things to do, such as documents to send or a time to call back.

The summary is the part I didn’t expect to like so much. When I’m tired or busy, I read a few lines in my own language and I know what was said. If something looks odd, I check the French transcript or play back that part of the recording.

If you are visiting France and don’t speak much French, the same thing works for calls to a hotel, a car rental desk, a restaurant or a pharmacy. You still need to get through the call, but afterwards you know exactly what was said.

Ask before you record

Tell the other person that you are recording the call. In France, recording a private conversation without the other person’s consent is against the law, and in many US states it is too. A simple “Je vous enregistre pour ne rien oublier, ça vous va ?” (“I’m recording so I don’t forget anything, is that OK?”) is enough.

Notes while I read

The second thing I use it for is reading. To write these articles and to guide people around the region I read a lot of books about the history, art and places of the region.

When I find something worth remembering, I press the button and say it out loud: the page number, a quote, a date, an idea for an article. It’s faster than writing, and I don’t have to put the book down. Later the app turns these voice notes into a tidy list, and I copy the useful parts into my notes for the next article.

What to know before you buy

• You need the phone app. The recorder works on its own, but the transcripts and summaries appear only after it syncs with the app.
• It isn’t perfect. With a bad line, a noisy café or several people talking at once, the transcript has mistakes. For anything important (a contract, an appointment, an amount) I check the transcript or the recording.
• The recordings go to the cloud. The audio is stored on the device, but transcription and summaries run on Pocket’s servers in the US. Think about that before you record something very private.
• There is a free plan and a paid one. The free plan already transcribes and summarizes; the paid plan adds things like better accuracy and summaries kept for longer. Check the current prices on the Pocket site, as they change with promotions. With my referral link you get 10% off the recorder.
• Battery. It lasts about four days of use and charges over USB-C.

Is it worth it?

For me, yes. It makes the most sense if you live in France, spend long periods here, or deal with French paperwork, landlords or contractors: it takes a lot of stress out of phone calls. And if you read and write a lot, it’s a quick way to keep notes without stopping.

If you’d like to try it, my Pocket referral link gives you 10% off the recorder. It’s a referral link: if you buy through it, I get some free months of the Pro plan (learn more).