With the amount of spam/robo calls I like to check text message history (which also shows voicemail history) before accepting calls from unknown numbers.
However the 'message' link to text messages only appears after the call. The message link is conveniently in the notification which makes it easy to review the message history AFTER the call but it would be better to see the history DURING the call so you could quickly scan any messages and decide to answer while the call is still incoming.