Have you ever returned a missed phone call from an unknown number only to discover that the person on the other side had dialed the wrong number? Or have you at least wondered at one point who it could be calling you, when all your phone was displaying was a number you’ve never seen before? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you’ll probably like the idea I’m about to describe.
Thanks to the fact that you can replace any piece of software on an Android phone – even the dialer, the list of missed calls and the notification window that pops up when you get an incoming call – it would be possible to replace those standard components with smarter ones which know how to fetch more information about the caller. So, instead of displaying “0315551234″, your phone could check the phone listings, your addressbook on Facebook, the list of everyone in your company and other sources to find out who’s calling. It could even fetch the person’s profile picture and display it next to their name. This way you could see all sorts of info about someone you haven’t added to your phone’s address book yet. Or, if it turns out that the call is coming form a telemarketer, it could simply drop it immediately.
Ribbit mobile appears to be doing something similar with their caller id 2.0. But somebody really needs to integrate a realtime version of this functionality directly into the phone software. And with Android, that’s actually possible! It might even be worth millions…
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