Why trust GreenbotFacebook can now take over all your smartphone’s calls with its new dialer app called Hello.
It puts Facebook-centric features front center, like using Messenger to call your friends, while also pledging better security with call-blocking features.
The app uses the Facebook database to identify callers, so you’ll know who is calling, even if it isn’t one of your contacts. It touts more power in blocking unwanted numbers a search feature that makes it easier to find nearby businesses. The app follows ’s Material Design guidelines very closely, keeping clean divisions between your recent calls, the dialer, Facebook contacts, settings. Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a way to import any of your device’s existing contacts, so it won’t be useful for looking up those who you’re not connected to via Facebook.
Facebook The Hello dialer ties in directly to several key Facebook features.
The search capabilities are otherwise similar to the stock dialer on Nexus devices, which lets you search for the name of the nearby pizza place right inside that app.
The Settings menu features a button to delete your data from Hello, wiping it from both your device Facebook’s servers.
Hello is likely to stay as an Android-exclusive, as iOS doesn’t offer the same kind of system-level permissions needed for this type of application. Hello is available now in the ay Store.
The story behind the story: Facebook tried to get its hs more deeply into Android once before with its unsuccessful Facebook Home effort, which sought to get the news feed other core Facebook features front center. Facebook clearly isn’t done trying to get a stronger hold on your phone, using Android’s relative openness as an entry point to doing so.
