Cyanogen today announced a partnership with Swedish startup Truecaller.
As a result of the deal, the company’s phone directory app will be included as a built-in feature in future releases of Cyanogen OS. Current Cyanogen OS devices will receive access to Truecaller in an over-the-air update that is set to roll out in a couple of months.
Truecaller functions like a crowdsourced telephone directory. Anyone that has the app can flag a number as spam for the rest of the community. Once a number is flagged by enough people, Truecaller will tag those numbers, letting the user decide whether to answer or not. Another feature of Truecaller allows users to associate names with numbers. In this way, it’s like Facebook’s Hello app. According to Truecaller’s website, its database has about 1.6 billion numbers.
“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,” said Dave Herman, Cyanogen’s vice president of product, in an interview with The Verge. “That’s something that’s going to bode well for emerging markets, where spam calling is very high.”
In the past, smartphone manufacturers like Nokia, Alcatel and LG have bundled the app on their phones. However, this marks the first time the service has been integrated into an operating system level.
Of course, one doesn’t need Cyanogen to take try out the app. It’s available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone.
[via]The Verge[/via]
