Elon Musk Says Will Retire His Phone Number And Use Only X For Calls, Texts

Musk has been actively advocating for X to evolve into an "everything application".

To recall, last year, the app introduced an initial version of its audio and video calling capabilities. ( Image Source :Getty )

On Friday (February ), X and Tesla owner and tech billionaire Elon Musk announced his intention to retire his phone number and rely solely on social media platform X for messaging, audio, and video calls. Musk's announcement is interpreted as a strategy to boost the audio and video calling functions of X, formerly Twitter. These features were initially introduced in October last year. Since then, Musk has been actively advocating for X to evolve into an "everything application".

"In a few months, I will discontinue my phone number and only use X for texts and audio/video calls," Musk posted from his X handle.

To recall, last year, the app introduced an initial version of its audio and video calling capabilities, which were accessible to a limited group of users. Just last month, the micro-blogging platform expanded this feature, enabling Android users to make direct audio and video calls within the app.

The company, in the middle of January, started rolling out calling support and the update was made available for Android smartphone users. The noteworthy aspect is that audio and video call support on X is free for all X users with the latest app update, which means users do not need an X premium subscription to make and recieve audio and video calls on the platform.

After being available for iOS users since October 2023, the feature was extended to Android users last month. Similar to the iOS experience, making outgoing calls requires an X Premium subscription, while users on the free tier can only receive incoming calls.

Since his acquisition of the platform, tech billionaire Elon Musk posted his plans of transitioning "Twitter" into an "everything app" that included 25,000-character-long posts. After renaming Twitter to X, Musk officially renamed the aggregating platform TweetDeck to XPro. The announcement of the renaming was made by Musk on July 28 through a tweet in which he stated, "Name is changing to XPro. Will come with a wide range of psy op plugins."