Facebook wants to take over your dialer through its newly launched app called Hello. Hello is exclusive on Android and is set to provide a similar service as Truecaller. Hello matches phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls to Facebook profiles to show you info about who you’re talking to, block calls from commonly blocked numbers, and search for business numbers. Privacy settings match those on Facebook. If a number is shared only with one group, for example, it will be available only to that same group in the app. I tried installing the application only to learn that the roll out is currently available in US, Brazil, and Nigeria.
Once downloaded, you sign in with Facebook, and give it permissions to sync your contacts with Facebook and interact with calls. After that, you can decide whether you want to actively use Hello, or let it just passively surface information about incoming calls. The service also offers free calls if both of the users have the Facebook Messenger application.
Truecaller an application that offers a similar service crowd sources information where is a user has someone listed under a certain name, the same name is what you will see when they call or you try to call them. Hello on the other hand relies on information from Facebook. We are not user if users will pick up the service seeing as to how Facebook’s earlier experiment to take over the home screen on Android, with Home flopped. We will let you know as soon as the service is available locally.
