I remember a time, not so long ago, when the only way to know who was calling on the phone was to pick it up. These days, a phone call will display the name, number, and (often) the picture of whoever is calling your mobile phone if they are in your contacts list. For those NOT on your list, there’s Truecaller.
Truecaller is a free Android app that adds UNIVERSAL caller ID functionality to Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and other mobile platforms.
It displays information on almost any call that your phone receives, whether the number is in your contacts list or not.
It also provides a lookup functionality, allowing you to type in an unknown name or number and – in most cases – find out information about it. Truecaller provides information across the world, and for every conceivable country.
Truecaller runs in the background and, when a call comes in, performs a lookup and displays information on who the caller is. It does this by searching your phone first, including your SIM card, and then searching external sources as well (including, apparenly, the phone itself that is being used to call you). The results vary; mostly, you will get some indication as to the name of the caller; in some cases, however, and depending on the country you reside in, you might get the listed address.
But that’s not all. Truecaller will also let you search for both NAMES and NUMBERS to identify contacts or to find people. It can also populate your contacts list with missing addresses en masse, if it finds them, as well as set up blacklists of people to block.
Wish list: some of these might sound like nitpicking, but here goes
- The one thing Truecaller will do, is set the country that you reside in. If you receive international phone calls, however, it will not identify those. Seems like it could be rewritten.
- Lookup filters: specifically, when looking up someone by name in ‘United States’, I found myself wishing that I could specify the state. The ‘address’ field didn’t seem to do proper filtering.
The verdict:
I test a lot of software, but it’s not very often that a software or app can pack a ‘wow’ factor anymore. Truecaller is one of those apps that, despite initial skepticism, delivers on what it promises, even when I didn’t think it was possible.
There is room for improvement, but this free app works so well I recommend it to everyone. Truecaller one will definitely be listed in a future edition of my “Must Have Android Apps” series of posts.
Get Truecaller here (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and Nokia).
