It’s not exactly controversial to suggest that most people hate not knowing who’s calling them. Even worse is when you answer a call only to be greeted by spam advertising on the other side. It seems pretty promising then that Android mod maker Cyanogen has inked a deal with TrueCaller to ensure that you always know exactly who’s calling.
According to The Verge, the deal will see TrueCaller’s offering baked into its OS rather than than as a pre-installed app.
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If you agree to use the service (making it an option is another smart move) then the service will apparently sniff out numbers in less than a second.
As well as using the web to identify a number, the service will be used to prevent spam from coming in. According to Cyanogen vice president of product Dave Herman, the features database has about 1.7-million numbers stored and also gives people the ability to mark a number as bad.
“You still see the phone number, but then you see that 635 people have marked it as a spam call, and instantly you can answer it or see whether to reject it,” Herman told The Verge. “That’s something that’s going to bode well for emerging markets, where spam calling is very high.”
Indeed, those emerging markets are where Cyanogen has been expending a lot of effort. In India for instance, it’s partnered with companies such as Micromax to build local services into its OS. That kind of effort makes sense not just because there is more space for growth in those markets, but also because Android users in those markets often get left behind when it comes to Android updates.
That’s something that Cyanogen says won’t be a problem on its platform. “We have the ability on our side to push updates frequently, like our nightly builds,” Herman says. “People expect them daily.”
