The two most important apps for smartphones are an app to record all of your calls, and an app to block spam calls.
Android has these categories nailed. In particular, blocking spam calls is best handled by a non-free app called Mr. Number, I say it’s non-free even tho it is free, because it depends on the Google Maps library. That sucks, of course.
However, it is awesome, because it blocks 99% of spam and robo calls. Every time a user gets a spam call thats’ not blocked, they file a report about that number. Now all the users running this software will block that number automatically.
I named this one app specifically because as far as I can tell the competing apps don’t use crowd-sourced data which is the real strength of the tool.
Will something similar exist for PureOS and the Librem 5? This is the most killer app for smartphones today (thanks to Android’s terrible security and people’s phones getting hacked and turned into botnets) and I honestly can’t live without it or something like it.
No, it uses functions from the google maps library, which is not the same as it requires location data. programmers often borrow functions from other libraries so they don’t have to re-invent the wheel.
The problem with that particular dependency is you can’t install the google maps library without installing some level of google apps package and that sucks.
@simba & Other developers (including me)
Beside an advanced app like you describe with cloud intelligence I would like to suggest:
I think it would be useful if the phone by it self has a possibility to block anonymous calls. Not so fancy like working with blacklists from the cloud, however already useful in educating-people in calling you with CLI and shaking off the marketeers.
I was personally thinking of the following options in the phone menu:
[Somewhere in the menu where call handeling is configured] Block incoming anonymous calls: [Pull down Menu]
No Blocking (calls ring on your phone)
Direct to voicemail
Play audio file to anon caller & hangup call
Play audio file to anon caller & redirect to Voicemail
Pickup and instant hangup call
Just waiting for my DEV board to arrive , and possible I might give it a go to create a pull request for adding this option of killing the anonymous callers.
Ring on valid caller PIN entry, else direct to voicemail
This would be useful for callers who, despite being known to the called, cannot enable caller ID for whatever reason. (e.g. I know someone who had to disable caller ID for personal safety after being stalked.) It would work a bit like adding +something to a Gmail address.
The incoming caller PIN could be set up in the Contacts entry for the caller, and then the phone could display that the call was from that person even though they withheld caller ID. (With a disclaimer that the identity was determined by PIN, since this is obviously more vulnerable to fraud than a phone number.)
On Asterisk the VoIP PBX, they also have an option that the caller can still enter his/her number on the key pad and than this CLI is send to the phone after it’s a valid number…
, and possible I might give it a go to create a pull request for adding this option of killing the anonymous callers.