Sprint’s iPhone customers who install Apple’s iOS 9.1 update will now be able to make and receive calls from their primary phone number across their connected devices, the carrier announced Thursday.
Similar to AT&T’s recently unveiled NumberSync feature, the new capability will allow iPhone users to take and respond to calls and texts on their iPad, iPod Touch, Apple Watch or Mac device.
“Customers already enjoy seamlessly responding to texts and email from a variety of great Apple devices,” said Sprint’s senior vice president of Product Development David Owens. “Now they can bring that flexibility to the primary phone number their friends, family and colleagues know best. This great feature puts the power of device choice in our customers’ hands.”
After downloading iOS 9.1 on all compatible devices, Sprint customers can enable single-number calling by aligning their primary and additional devices with the same Apple ID, signing them into iCloud, enabling Wi-Fi calling and setting up their auxiliary devices to receive calls through their settings menu.
Sprint originally enabled Wi-Fi calling – which allows customers to connect to Wi-Fi networks to make calls and texts where cellular service is limited – for its iPhone customers running iOS 8.3 in April. T-Mobile was the first to offer Wi-Fi calling to Android users in 2007 and made the feature available to iPhone customers last year. AT&T enabled Wi-Fi calling on select iOS devices earlier this month after receiving a long-awaited waiver from the FCC.
