iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus support the next-generation of HD voice services for even clearer calls, according to a new report. The technology is called Enhanced Voice Services (EVS), but you’ll only be able to use it on certain carriers.

Apple introduced us to HD voice services, which takes advantage of LTE networks to enhance call quality, with iPhone 6 in 2014. But now some carriers offer an even greater alternative.

EVS is a “superwideband” audio coding standard offering up to 20 kHz audio bandwidth. That’s a huge increase over the 7 kHz bandwidth offered by HD voice. EVS is also more robust than its predecessors, which should mean fewer dropped calls.

According to Engadget Japan, which interviewed the president of local carrier KDDI, the iPhone 8 is Apple’s first device to support this technology.

“This iPhone supports EVS,” said Takashi Tanaka, machine translated. “This is what Dokomo called before as VoLTE+, but once you become accustomed to this, you can not return to the 3G sound quality. The coding of VoLTE’s speech was even better.”

EE in the U.K. appears to be the only carrier marketing the new technology with a service it calls Enhanced HD Voice. For now, only those with an iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus can take advantage of it, which suggests rival smartphones don’t have the technology yet.

U.S. carriers have been offering EVS for a while now, so you should be able to take advantage of this soon if you just upgraded to one of Apple’s latest handsets. However, as things stand, it’s not a feature Apple or its carrier partners are talking about.

Via: Makotakara